


Phoenix

by Imagining_in_the_Margins



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fake Character Death, Friends to Lovers, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, Miscarriage, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Pregnancy, Romance, Secrets, Self-Insert, Sex, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:35:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24531643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagining_in_the_Margins/pseuds/Imagining_in_the_Margins
Summary: It’d been 10 weeks since Spencer died in your arms. At least, that’s what you thought. (Rewrite of the Emily/Doyle Arc)
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Original Female Character(s), Spencer Reid/Reader
Comments: 10
Kudos: 206





	1. Chapter One

I should have died.

By all accounts, I should have died when the moment that man pulled the trigger. It had been a quick and dirty game of Russian Roulette with an unwilling player to decide whether or not I got to live.

The sound of gunpowder and fear should have been the last I heard. The way he smiled should have been the last thing I saw.

The memories of _every single_ look Spencer had ever given me flashing through my brain in high definition should have been the last thoughts I had.

But they weren’t. The force of a blank shot into the side of my head, rattling the tortured mind within. My thoughts faded to black for just one moment before the world came back into view in dizzying double vision.

An excited holler rang through the room, and I winced at the way the sound hit my ears like a second shot.

“Lucky girl!” He shouted through his laughter, “Dr. Reid will be happy to hear that the odds worked in his favor.”

Hearing him say Spencer’s name was enough to make me sick, to ignite the urge to wrap my hands around the man’s throat so that he could never speak it again. Although I tried to pull against the restraints, my weakness was too overwhelming.

We had only learned about this part of Spencer’s past a few days earlier. It was difficult to understand why he would hide this from us so long. But he was never the kind of person who wanted to burden other people. He always wanted to be able to fix things himself.

But there were some problems he couldn’t fix on his own. There were some things that were so deeply rooted in fate that there was no way to stop them.

That was why I was here, playing the odds in his place. As long as he couldn’t find Spencer, someone he loved had to play for him. It would continue like this, he swore, until one of them was dead.

He placed a hand on my cheek, and I recoiled from the sensation despite my persistent vertigo and nausea.

“To be honest, it’s kind of cute how much he likes you. Don’t know what he sees.”

He raised the gun to my face again, and I stared down the barrel with a panic that caused me to feel ashamed.

“Be a dear, would you? When you see him, let him know that I’m a man of my word.”

Trying not to focus on what might happen, I closed my eyes, remembering the way it had felt when Spencer held me last. I wanted to smell the cinnamon and coffee that hung on his clothes. I craved the warmth and security of his hands on the small of my back.

‘ _Thank you_ ,’ he had said with a solemn smile, ‘ _for never giving up on me_.’

I tried not to worry, to not think of everything I wished I could have done differently when I heard more than felt the cracking sound of metal against bone, my body going limp before I could let go of the thought and drift back into nothingness.

 _— Two Days Later_ —

It had only been a couple days since I had stared death in the face and I still had the concussion to prove it. Worse still, I had something weighing down on me- the heaviness that accompanies knowing what your final thoughts would have been.

Which is why I stood outside of Spencer’s hotel room, my hand hovering over it like someone else would knock for me. Trying to summon the courage to make that contact, I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and picturing how much easier this would be if I had just told him the truth in the beginning.

I was so distracted by my thoughts that I barely registered the door opening until I heard a very confused and concerned Spencer speak.

“(Y/n)? What are you doing here?”

My eyes shot open and I pulled my hand back down to my sides, staring at him exactly how you would expect someone who had been shot in the head by a blank two days ago would act.

“Hey.” I said, as if it answered his question.

“Are you… okay?” He was leaning against the door, his hand gripping the edge like he had been expecting something worse. He somehow seemed relieved that it was just me being a freak at his door.

The question he asked had a complicated answer, and I didn’t trust myself to know how to delicately navigate it. But then again, he’d never minded dealing with my messes before.

“No,” I answered honestly. “I’m not.” 

He gave me a look that told me he felt the same. Maybe that’s just what I wanted to be true; maybe I made it all up to make sense of the way he opened the door slowly to let me in.

There was just something about the softness in his eyes as he padded after me, his hands shoved unceremoniously into his sweatpants to avoid having to find a more appropriate position.

Meanwhile, my hands were wringing helplessly in front of me, my eyes darting back and forth between the floor and his face. Thankfully he didn’t let me stew any longer, finally reaching out and grabbing both of my hands in one of his.

“Can I help?”

I couldn’t focus on the question because the way his hand covered both of mine so easily was short circuiting the little brainpower that I still had control over.

Looking at his face didn’t help, either, because all I found was essentially a distorted mirror in his eyes. We were staring at each other with dilated pupils, raised eyebrows, and flushed cheeks.

I couldn’t be this wrong, this delusional, I thought. I couldn’t have made up _all_ the signs of attraction flowing in the ever-closing gap between us. There were only so many ways to test the theory without ruining our future forever.

Slowly, I calculated whether I wanted to take that chance. I narrowed my attention to those luminous topaz colored eyes and the way they caressed me like an embrace. I felt only the way his thumb stroked the back of my hand.

I found only comfort. I found the distinct lack of pain; an understanding and a pleading.

“I think…” I muttered, moving closer to him with my eyes lowered until I couldn’t any longer. Swallowing all the worries that tried to worm their way out, I reiterated with more confidence, “I think you can, yeah.”

I was expecting him to ask me how, but he didn’t. Instead, his hand left his pocket and came to my face. With a timid, gentle touch, the tips of his fingers traced the outline of my jaw, testing the way it felt to touch me with undeniable intimacy.

A breath shuddered from my lungs, my entire body leaning into him as both of our minds played through all the possible universes where this never happened. A world where one of us wasn’t here to hold the other.

But that wasn’t the world we were in right now. Right now, he was in front of me, his touch incomparably affectionate. The tenderness he managed to express so simply was overwhelming, and I couldn’t hold myself back any longer.

I practically launched myself at him, both of my hands threading through his hair and pulling him down to a desperate, reckless kiss. To my surprise, he immediately reciprocated, his hands finding my face just the same.

Our bodies were twined together so quickly, losing track of where one began and the other ended. His arms had found their way to my hips, lifting me onto the bed behind us, pinning me beneath him before I could even take a breath.

There was nothing one sided about the way he couldn’t breathe when we broke apart. The rawness of the emotion in the air was not a figment of my imagination. The way his mouth danced over any inch of skin he could reach, his hands seeking a home on my hips were beyond anything my mind could have conjured up.

I couldn’t have made this up. I’d tried before, and it had never been nearly as beautiful as this.

It was like time had impossibly slowed down, letting us explore everything we’d always wondered. When his hands stretched across my leg, I could feel the longing in his touch. 

The smell of his cologne hung to his skin even as I began maneuvering his shirt over his head. He didn’t stop to be insecure like he sometimes did; there was no time for hesitation now, not even in the infinite timeline of this hotel room.

I touched the muscles of his chest, watching the way they moved under my ministrations. His eyes watched me with rapt fascination, as if looking away from me would make me disappear like one of his magic tricks.

When my hands reached the waistband of his pants, I let them fall. I brought them to my own shirt, swiftly pulling it off in one motion as he sat up, his legs on either side of my own. The look he gave me was almost predatory - possessive and determined.

Yet there was still some pause, something that made him cautious when I went to remove my bra. The fabric sat loosely on top of me, still covering me as he gave me that look.

“Spencer.”

Just by saying his name, I could see him coming back to me.

“Stay with me,” I pleaded, drawing the fabric down my arms until I could toss it aside, hopefully along with any remaining reservation either of us held. He returned to his place above me, his lips finding mine once more in the dim light of the room.

Any fears at this point were too late; we had gone past the point of no return the moment he opened his door to me.

But still, he voiced them when he prematurely ended our kiss by tearing his face away from me, like he wouldn’t be able to stop any other way.

“Please…” his voice was static made of hunger and fear, “don’t just do this because you think it’ll make the pain stop.”

I waited for him to look at me, those beautiful amber eyes returning to mine, slowly, like waves returning to the beach.

“I’m not.”

He couldn’t argue with the truth in my statement. There was nothing about this entire encounter that was made in haste or irrationality. We had been dancing around this undeniable connection between us for so long, waiting for something to push us over the edge.

As it turned out, a near death experience really could make you reevaluate.

Spencer’s brush with death had been so long ago now, however, that he seemed to have forgotten how they work. Because he still wasn’t convinced, pressing a firm hand on my cheek as he maintained the proverbial space between us.

“Why me?” The words were raw and said through a clenched jaw, “Why did you show up at my door?”

“I never wanted anyone else.”

That was the answer he accepted, the answer he had been waiting for. Because within seconds his mouth had captured mine again in an open-mouthed frenzy, his hand fondling my breast as I tried to find a way for my mouth to do three things at once.

Because as much as I needed to breathe, the hushed moans and frantic sliding of our tongues against the other seemed even more necessary.

Removing my pants was a group effort that further displayed how synchronized we’d become, and soon we were both laying almost completely disrobed.

It took me no time to latch onto his boxers, tugging them down his hips to signal my full dedication to sharing this moment. Although he let me, he was hesitant to do the same to me.

Kicking his last piece of clothing down off the bed, he sat up on his knees once more, his hands hovering over my hips.

“Don’t do that.”

Glancing back to my flushed cheeks and half-lidded eyes, he let out a shaky breath as I clarified, “Don’t leave me now. Stay with me.”

“I have to be sure,” he said through the desire, “I have to be sure that this is what you want.”

I didn’t know how else to tell him, to show him that this was all I had ever wanted. There was no other reason I would have come here tonight.

“Right now, you are all that I want.”

The way I prefaced my statement was an offering. It was a shield over the messy reality that might follow; an escape route for us to take if this became too much when all was said and done. It was a way for us to discount the delicacy with which he removed my underwear.

 _Right now_ didn’t mean _forever_.

But the way he kissed me did. His fingers gently entered my heat to find that I was drenched in my own longing. He insisted he prepare me properly, anyway.

When he couldn’t keep his mouth on mine anymore, the moans too disjointed and powerful to hold, he opted to press kisses against my neck and shoulders. My body rocked along with his hand, seeking something so much more.

I wanted to call out his name, but a part of me was still frightened by the intimacy of it all. Instead I reached down to hold his erection, enjoying the way his skin felt like silk under my touch.

The first noise I had elicited from him was the sound of my name on his lips.

“Spencer,” I returned, my hand moving more quickly as his tried to keep some steady rhythm. But soon we had devolved into nothing but our fervent need for the other - the need for something closer.

Taking hold of his wrist, I guided it away from my center so that I could replace it with what we both wanted most. Once the head of his member made contact he nearly choked on the gasp he gave.

How long had we been waiting for this moment? Dreaming of what it would be like to finally give whatever pieces of ourselves remained to the other? I knew that I had been waiting since the first day I met him.

When I sought an answer in his eyes, I saw that same distorted mirror. He had been waiting, dreaming, hoping just the same.

I left up to him the pace he wanted to take, and after another moment of gazes full of yearning, he finally began to sink into my heat. I couldn’t contain the way my entire body reacted, arching up into him while simultaneously wrapping around him to pull him down closer.

Fully within me, he whispered inaudible words against my skin that I would forever be left to wonder about. I didn’t ask him to speak up because there were also so many words I was keeping under my breath and in my chest.

His pace was tender and patient, each movement pulsing with an elusive confession neither of us had the ability to voice just yet. So instead, we enjoyed what we had, our bodies moving together in the night to share the secrets we refused to speak.

Slowly, his thrusts increased in speed and power as the walls between us came crumbling down. Amongst the wreckage, we both hoped we would either survive or fall together.

I held on for dear life, my heels digging into him as our bodies grew weary of waiting. Our moans and breaths intermingled like a song in the air.

Our eyes met again, the spark of something deeper like a star tumbling through space only to fade back into the darkness.

But it was there.

Unable to continue watching him without my eyes threatening to spill my tears and all my secrets, I brought his face down for one final kiss.

There was one final thrust, and Spencer refused to miss the way I looked in that moment. Ripping his mouth from mine, he held my face as he watched me lose myself in the pleasure he granted me.

He watched as my body held him closer, begging for the release he so eagerly gave. The warmth seeping into my stomach felt like an embrace meant to last a lifetime. I committed the moment to memory; the first time I had ever felt truly complete.

Our bodies stayed stuck together as he refused to avert his gaze, like there would never be enough time to take in what he had just witnessed.

When his eyes were finally closed, time began again, and without the fog of desire, what remained were two people with no walls, and no plans.

The silence that followed somehow seemed even more oppressive than the one that had preceded this. I had told myself it would be so much easier if I had just told him, but I realized that this was just a different type of difficult.

When I tried to tidy myself, I inspected the remnants of Spencer left behind. Not just the physical evidence between my legs or the way my hair tangled from his hands and my skin bruised from his mouth.

It was the relieved smile that I couldn’t erase. The way my heartbeat felt quieter and surer than ever before. He had made me promise that I wasn’t just doing this to make the pain go away, but it had gone, nonetheless.

And when I made my way back to the bed, I found him waiting for my return. That familiar innocent curiosity dancing in his eyes while I collected my clothes from around the bed.

He waited until I had slipped into my shirt before he grabbed my hand, his voice hoarse and weary from the words never said.

“Stay with me.”

The words took back the breath that had only recently returned, and I waited for the qualifier he was biting back.

“At least… just for now.”

Never letting go of his hand, I crawled into the bed beside him.

 _For now_ didn’t mean _forever_ , but the way he held me that night did.

_— Two Days Later —_

When you see the love of your life half-conscious on the ground, there are so many things that go through your mind. Every nasty word, every almost, every if, every should have, could have, would have - they all blare like sirens in your head.

He had found Spencer. But Spencer, being the selfishly idiotic hero he was, had wanted to find him alone.

He had already seen what happened when he didn’t; he had seen me caught in the crossfire. And despite how many times I told him that I would gladly take that place for him, he couldn’t let it happen again.

This time, I wasn’t the one in the crosshairs.

“Agent down!” The guttural sound of my voice as it ripped through my vocal cords still wasn’t enough to explain the pain.

Spencer’s eyes opened at the sound of my voice, and I was just so grateful that he was still alive. Dropping to my knees next to him, I brought him into my arms, holding his practically limp body against me.

“Come on, Spencer, look at me.”

His eyes were rolling back, but I could see he was trying to stay awake. My heart sounded like controlled destruction in my ears, but I could still hear the sound of his strangled breath.

“Hey, hey,” I called, my hand patting his cheek as my other hand struggled to find the source of the quickly pooling blood.

“Come on pretty boy, talk to me. I know you… I know you’ve got lots to say.” Tears were slipping down my cheeks and onto him, and his muscles twitched at the way they felt when they hit him. “Don’t get quiet on me now.”

He was struggling to say my name, but it never quite came out. Finally locating the wound in his stomach, I desperately tried to hold back the blood. It wasn’t working.

“ ** _Please_** , someone help me!” I shouted toward the hallway. I could hear the hurried footsteps, but they would never be fast enough.

“(Y/n),” he croaked from my lap, “It’s okay.”

Shaking my head, I tried to calm the anger swelling in my chest. His eyes were closing once again, and when I tried to hold his face all I could see was the way the red fluid coated his cheek.

“Don’t you dare, Spencer Reid, don’t— I-I’ll never forgive you.”

The medics arrived at that moment, gently but swiftly taking him from my arms. I struggled on the floor, slippery with his blood, and tried to follow them, the world feeling like a dream that would never end.

There was no room in my lungs for words. All my breath was stolen by the way I ran after the gurney. When we rounded the corner, I saw the flashing red and white lights, the siren matching the chaos in my mind.

“We’re losing his pulse.”

I swear I barely made it inside the ambulance before they slammed the doors shut, and I watched in a seemingly apathetic state of horror as they hung the blood bags. I tried to think about what was happening, but my brain kept shutting down.

 _I’ll never forgive you_. That’s what he’d heard last from me.

“Can he hear me?” I all but shouted to the paramedic trying to listen to his pulse. She didn’t answer, just glancing up at me with a frustrated, sympathetic glare.

“If you’ve got something to say, sweetheart, you better say it now.”

But suddenly there were no words, my throat wrecked by sobs and disbelief. What was I supposed to tell him? There was nothing I could say that would sum up everything I was feeling.

I love you didn’t come close enough.

His head fell to the side as he started coughing, blood spraying onto the sterile white of the back of an ambulance. His eyes opened enough, moved enough to make me feel like he was looking for me.

I grabbed his hand, squeezing it like it would somehow beat his heart for him.

“It’s okay, Spencer,” I said very unconvincingly, trying to avoid my tears hitting his hand this time. “I’m sorry about what I said, I didn’t mean it.”

Maybe I was just being self-deluded, but it felt like he was holding on just to look at me. The connection I felt was the only thing keeping _me_ grounded. I couldn’t look away.

“Please…” he whispered, “Don’t cry.”

I shook my head harder now, unable to process the request. It seemed like such an utter impossibility, something that even he should know I couldn’t do for him.

“Okay,” my voice shook, “I’ll try to stop.”

The corner of his lip twitched ever so slightly, like he was trying to smile but the weight of the pain held it down.

“When you wake up,” I said with my own smile, trying to sound comforting, “I promise I won’t cry anymore.”

The paramedic was giving me that look I never wanted to see. She was trying to tell me that it wasn’t going to happen. But it _had_ to. I could feel the vehicle slowing down and knew this might be the last chance.

So much of me screamed to say what I wanted to say the most, to tell him that I loved him, that I always had and I always would. But when I brought his hand to my face, pressing a kiss to the now freezing skin, I couldn’t get it out.

“I’ll be there when you wake up, pretty boy. Don’t make me wait.”

As we came to a stop, his eyes stayed open. His chest would rise so long as he could see me, and I prayed that it wouldn’t stop once they wheeled him out of my sight. His hand slipped from mine like it was taking my whole heart with it.

I followed him, trailing bloody footprints and tears behind me all the way to the doors of the operating room when they wouldn’t let me go any further. I stared at the closed doors and listened to the way the world fell silent.

 _What am I supposed to do now?_ I thought, waiting until I felt the hands of a nurse on my back, trying to move me into the waiting room.

The world felt empty and cold, even when Morgan’s arms wrapped around me, ignoring the blood I was drenched in. Spencer’s blood.

“He’s gonna be alright, okay?” I wanted to believe him, but he hadn’t seen the way Spencer barely clung to life. “He’s a tough kid. Death couldn’t get him before. It’s gonna be alright.”

But there were no words for me, and when he finally let go, I saw the way JJ held out clothes to me like they would make the situation better. I stared at her hands, trying to find the wherewithal to take them from her.

“You don’t want to look like that when he wakes up, right?” Morgan said, and I absently nodded. Standing in the bathroom, I looked down at mixture of red and brown staining everything. I looked in the mirror and saw it.

I saw blood covering the cheek and neck where he had kissed me the other night. I saw it trailing down the arms that I had used to hold him. I saw darkness pooled over my heart and I wondered if the universe was mocking me.

He had to wake up. He had to.

I don’t know how long it took me to slowly wash my skin, removing the tactical gear and changing into something so much softer. It still felt like sandpaper on my raised skin. My body remained on high alert in a way I was convinced would never go away again.

Dumping the paper towels into the biohazard bin in the corner, I entered the silent waiting room, looking at the solemn faces that remained. 

Hotchner wasn’t there.

My feet dragged across the floor as I made my way to Morgan, who sat leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his head hung between his shoulders.

“If you’re even listening, don’t take the kid.” I heard him whisper under his breath. It was a desperate situation that would move Derek Morgan to plead for mercy from a God he despised.

Rossi, too, sat just across the aisle, hunched over in a more traditional prayer. I hoped that his God would be enough. When I settled into the seat beside Morgan, he took my hand, tilting his head up just a little to meet my eyes.

I held on tightly to his hand. So tightly I feared I might break it altogether. But he didn’t tell me to stop, or show any sign of weakness. Even when our hands started to shake under the power of our grips, he remained silent.

The whole world remained silent but at the same time it was so fucking loud.

The sound of some bullshit advertisement over the occasional siren. The chattering of nurses returning from their break. The faint beeping indicating access granted to each of the doors I wasn’t allowed through anymore.

I just kept telling myself how it would feel when they said he would be okay. How the world would be okay again, how the smell of anesthetic would stop making me so sick. I imagined the way I would be able to breathe again when I saw him smile at me again.

I closed my eyes and pictured the way it would feel to have his warm hands on my face once more, kissing me after I finally gathered the courage to tell him I love him. I wouldn’t miss that chance again.

But that never happened.

The moment Hotchner walked back into the room with JJ at his side, I knew what was going to happen. Still, I couldn’t believe it.

“I’m sorry.”

Everything felt wrong. It felt… like nothing. Like emptiness.

“He… never made it off the table.”

They were all looking at me now, and I couldn’t process at first why. It wasn’t until the sound of my own screams overwhelmed my senses. My hands over my ears, tugging at my hair as I collapsed into myself, my body trembling with the force of my own voice.

Morgan grabbed me, but I couldn’t feel anything. He tried to stifle my screams, begging me to stop. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t contain the brutal sounds I was making. They were rattling my mind worse than the blank to the head.

I had to get away, but I couldn’t. I needed to rewind time, to find my way out of this reality. This couldn’t be happening. It must have been a cruel joke, a nightmare that I had gotten stuck in.

But it felt too real, the way that my screams halted because my lungs were empty. It felt too real, the way I tried to get up, but fell to the ground with Morgan coming after me.

“I’ve got you.” He said, but we both knew it wouldn’t be enough. I clenched my chest, feeling the way the pain alerted me to the fact this was as real as I hoped it wasn’t.

“I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay.”

 _No_ , I thought, _It won’t_.

He knew that too. It wasn’t fair to be angry at him, but I was. The only thing that managed to get me off the floor was knowing that if I didn’t, I would throw up on the floor. I fought to get out of his grip, and managed to run past everyone’s worried stares without even registering them.

Falling to the ground, I clutched the bowl and spewed everything inside of me. I threw up everything but the pain, the one thing I desperately needed to purge. Somehow, I was still breathing enough to cry. I cried until my eyes couldn’t anymore.

My head was resting against the toilet, the only thing that was keeping me steady. I could almost hear Spencer telling me how unsanitary it was— that I was going to get sick. I wouldn’t hear his voice again, though.

I mean, I could hear him in recordings. We had the occasional videos of birthday wishes and interviews. I would even be able to see his smile, to smell his cologne on his clothes.

But now, the room just smelled like stale blood. His blood that I had cleaned off my skin.

I could still feel it. I had to get out of here.

Standing up, I came face to face with my reflection. Tiny petechiae were already dotting my eyes. They were the physical evidence of how hard my body was trying to reject the truth.

The person in the mirror didn’t feel like me.

This place felt like a vacuum, like the Schrodinger’s box that I had been stupid enough to look inside. The cat was dead.

Spencer Reid, my best friend and the love of my life, was dead.

That was the thought that led my fist through the air. The shattering of the glass sounded like chimes. The beating on the door that followed sounded like drums.

I looked down at the pieces now scattered about the room, and I picked up a jagged piece from the sink. It wasn’t going to be a weapon. I just wanted to see if I looked any more like myself.

But now I was just the same foreign person through a sheer coating of red that dripped from my hand.

“Put it down!” was all I heard from a familiar voice, followed by a much less familiar, “We’ve got a 1013.”

I could see them in the reflection, but it didn’t truly register that they were there until I swiped at them with the same hand holding the glass.

I didn’t mean to hurt them. I couldn’t even tell you it was in my hand. None of my body felt like it belonged to me anymore.

There was a small pinch and a stinging in my arm. It felt warm and cold at the same time. I tried to convince myself that their arms holding me down belonged to him instead, that the warmth blooming in my chest wasn’t because of an antipsychotic.

The glass clattered onto the floor and I let myself believe that when I woke up Spencer would be there.

And if he couldn’t, I hoped I wouldn’t wake up at all.

— _One Week Later_ —

My funeral dress was never supposed to be worn.

When I bought this modest black dress two years ago I had always intended for it to sit in the back of my closet and never be used.

I had definitely never wanted to wear it here, to the funeral of Spencer Reid. But here I was, clumsily stumbling into a funeral home smelling like the bottle I’d drained immediately before coming.

I didn’t even remember how the fuck I got there. I didn’t have my keys, so I guess I hadn’t driven. The first person I saw had to be his parents, and I had to look away. It took everything in me not to scream at his father for even bothering to show up.

Then again, I guess I couldn’t talk. At least he looked sober. 

My legs were unsteady as I tried to make my way through the doors. It didn’t take long until I felt a hand on my arm, stopping me from proceeding any further.

“(Y/n)… What are you doing?”

I bit on my cheek as I teetered on my unsteady feet, looking up at him with what I wanted to be a glare. But then he was just looking at me with so much pity and heartbreak I couldn’t handle it.

“Don’t, Morgan. Please, just—“ I tried to take my arm back, but began to stumble in my heels. He caught me again, pulling me close to him as he cleared his throat, guiding me away from the small crowd near the door.

Once we were out of the way, he let me rest my back against the wall. I cursed the hallway for spinning so badly. Why do all these carpets and walls have to be patterned? It made me nauseous.

Well, that and all the alcohol.

“You need to go home.”

I laughed at the thought, like I wouldn’t have chosen that option if I could have. Ignoring the order, I bit down on my tongue to stop myself from crying.

“I can’t just leave.”

“Come on. What would Reid think about you being here like this?”

“I don’t know, Morgan.” I couldn’t stop myself. I begged myself to be quiet, but I couldn’t. The alcohol won. “I don’t know how he would feel because he’s fucking dead, so…”

The tears had already started pouring, and he sighed as he tried not to join me. I hated that I was making him be the strong one here, but I was so lost. I didn’t know how to be there for him. I couldn’t even help myself.

“I didn’t even want to fucking come here,” I pointed out while wiping my tears on my sleeve. He took my hand, holding it tightly as he looked into my swollen, bruised eyes.

“None of us did.”

Trying to reorient myself enough to hug him, I mostly just fell into his arms. My tears seemed less heavy on his shirt. I could feel the pain in the way he held me.

“I can’t fucking be here,” I mumbled against his shirt, trying to breathe through the sickness I felt in every inch of my being. 

“Can you wait in my car?” It was an appealing option. Anything besides being here. I nodded against him, and I could hear him digging for his keys in his pockets.

But then I had to cut him off, pushing away from him as my head started spinning much harder. “Actually, no… I-I think I’m going to be sick.”

Luckily he was able to get me to a bathroom, pulling my hair back in time for me to throw up all the offensive liquid that I had tried to drown in. Just like before, I still couldn’t get rid of the pain through my throat.

It was there to stay.

“I can’t do this, Morgan,” I spit out with the bile.

“You don’t have a choice.”

Turning to look at him, I noticed how my whole body shook from the exhaustion of the past week. Morgan had been more understanding than I was expecting, and I had an idea why.

It wasn’t that I had expected him to be mean, but I could just tell in the way he had been watching me more carefully that he knew what had happened that night in the hotel room.

“Did he… Did he tell you?” My voice was quiet and embarrassed, but I needed to know. “Did he tell you what happened?”

“Yeah,” he admitted softly, “He did.”

I let out a breath of relief, already feeling the weight lift just by knowing that I hadn’t made it all up. There was another person that was still on this earth who knew what had happened. I had been so worried about tarnishing his memory, making his death about myself.

But Morgan knew. Spencer had told him. It mattered. We mattered. I had mattered to him.

“Why did he do that?” I asked between sobs, still occasionally retching as my body rioted against its own stupidity.

“Why did he just… He let me do that and then he just… He fucking left me here. To pick up the pieces he left.”

“He didn’t want to. He didn’t mean to.” Morgan’s voice was so incredibly calming, but the storm inside my heart was too much for him to handle alone. I felt like I was drowning, and the longer I clung to him, the faster we’d both drown.

Seeing through my inner turmoil, he tried to break through the waves.

“He loved you, (y/n).”

I appreciated the thought, but the truth was that he was only just guessing, too. Spencer hadn’t told him that; that much I was sure of.

“I’ll never know that, though. I’ll have to go the rest of my life not knowing.”

His hand on my back reminded me that I was still here. That I was still a person, alive, in front of him. We were both there together, and we were just trying to get through it.

“Hey,” he called as his eyes caught mine, “He loved you.”

“Thanks,” I whispered, the chill in me disappearing only for a moment before I realized my heart was still frozen. “But… It’s not the same to hear it from you.”

“I know, but it was worth a shot.” He said with a little smile, anything to make this not the worst day of our entire lives. It didn’t work.

“I can’t do this. H-He was the one who helped me. He was the smart one. He was the useful one. I can’t make up for the space he left. I’m not…”

He just listened to me now, waxing poetic about the man who would never be able to truly understand how much his absence would shake the earth. We both loved him. I could see in the way Morgan fought back tears and still lost.

I knew he would understand what I said next to not just be a cry for help, but a genuinely held belief.

“It should have been me.”

Once again, he held me to his chest, letting me wail and scream about how unfair the world was. In a way, I felt like this was his release as well. In letting me scream, he wouldn’t have to.

So we stayed there for awhile longer, and eventually I was well enough to make it through the ceremony. Because I wouldn’t forgive myself if I left now. I needed to be there to place my flower on his grave.

I needed to be strong for him, even if he would never see it.

So I sat through the entire thing. I sang Amazing Grace, and I watched the entire time that Morgan, Hotch, Rossi, and Will carried him down the way. With trembling hands, I approached his casket in front of everyone.

With only a few tears, I placed the iris down as gently as a feather.

He was the one who had told me about Iris, the messenger goddess who traveled rainbows between this earth and the one beyond. She was the one who guided their lost souls to their final rest.

Spencer always told he wasn’t sure whether he believed in heaven - the last time he died wasn’t enough for him to know. But he was hopeful. 

So, if there was a heaven, I wanted this to be the message he received when he got there.

Because an iris also symbolizes wisdom and admiration. It demonstrates hope, faith, and cherished friendships. It is the promise of love.

As they lowered him into the ground, I held his mother’s hand and hoped that she would be able to forget this moment. I selfishly wished that I could talk to her about him and only remember the good.

Together, we cried at the death of something more than a friend and a son. We mourned the hope for so much of our future.

The whole time, I couldn’t help but hate the way the clouds above us began to drain, soaking the freshly moved dirt. I stayed long after everyone left. Well, at least I thought I did.

But when the sun began to peek through the clouds and I spotted a rainbow across the way, someone took my hand.

For a moment, I thought it might be a spirit telling me that he had received my message. But it wasn’t. It was Morgan, here to take me home.

And for now, that was enough for me.


	2. Chapter Two

— **_One Week Later_** —

In stories about tragedy, they always say the room is so silent that you can hear the constant tick-tick-ticking of the clock. But that isn’t true.

There were always other noises to be heard. For example, the sound of soft footsteps in the apartment above Apartment 23 at the Langham. The muted chirping of the birds through the moderately thick glass of his windows.

The choked sobs from my mouth as I gripped his shirt with so much force I honestly thought I might tear it in two.

“Hey, it’s Morgan,” I heard from down the hall as the door creaked open, “Sorry I’m late.”

I didn’t respond, knowing that he’d find me here in due time. The apartment wasn’t very big, and my crying was loud enough that the neighbors could probably hear me.

“(Y/n)?” He called again before poking his head into the room, spotting me on my knees with several half-packed boxes of clothes at my side.

See, one of those things that you don’t think about when you agree to be someone’s emergency contact on their lease is what happens if they get murdered.

What happens, by the way, is that you become the person responsible for collecting their belongings and moving them out.

Morgan had agreed to help me, knowing that this wasn’t the kind of thing anyone is intended to do alone. I hoped that he might be able to distract me from what it would be like to be confronted with Spencer’s things- his life, just as he had left it.

Knowing that this was his primary job today, he came and sat down next to me among the boxes.

“Hey, pretty girl,” he joked, “What’s wrong?”

I rolled my eyes, recognizing that the last thing I looked right now was _pretty_. He might as well have told me I looked like shit.

“You know, the usual.” I said with a smile, wiping snot and tears on my sleeve without letting go of the pink shirt in my hands.

“What’s going on?” Understanding that he was asking about the exact circumstances that had led me here, I sighed. I didn’t want him to feel bad about being late, but it really had ended up being the worst possible timing.

“Diana just left and…” He winced at the name, already realizing how much had happened in the time he was supposed to be here.

“I don’t know, Morgan. I knew she wouldn’t be able to take a lot of it or… or even want to. I mean, she doesn’t even really know what’s happening half the time. It’s like her brain just… won’t accept it.”

Turning the shirt over in my hands, I found the worn tag around the collar. I toyed with the little strip of fabric, hoping that it would distract my hands from what I was holding. From where I was.

“It’s nice to talk to someone about him like he’s not gone, though.”

He nodded, although I could feel the minor disapproval. The comfort I found in pretending like he wasn’t gone never lasted long.

“She said she got a message from him the other day and… I just,” my breath caught in my throat, “I _really_ wanted to believe her.”

“I understand.”

“And now I’m here with… basically everything he’s ever owned, and I have to figure out what to do with it.” I gestured to the several already packed boxes in the corner of the room.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with hundreds of books?” I said with a bitter laugh. I wish that I could have yelled at Spencer about his luddite tendencies, warn him ahead of time just how much work he was leaving for me.

He never thought he would be leaving it for me.

“I’ll tell you what you do with them. Whatever the hell you want.”

I looked at him with an unsure smile. He was trying to make me feel better about all the impossible decisions I’d have to make, but I don’t think anything on this earth could have made it any easier.

“But… what if it’s wrong?” I asked, wiping another stray tear from my cheek before deciding it was time to stop crying.

“It can’t be wrong. He wanted you to decide.”

I knew that; I knew that he had wanted me to decide. He wasn’t the kind of person who didn’t think things through; far from it. When he had put my name on that paper, he had been choosing the person he trusted most.

Why did it have to be me?

“I just… is it wrong for me to keep it?”

Morgan looked at me with so much pity it would normally fill me with rage. Right now, however, I was too tired to be angry.

“Is it wrong for me to… to wear his clothes? To… keep the things he loved for myself? What if he didn’t want me to have them? What if he wouldn’t have given them to me?”

His arm was around me now, pulling me closer to him until my head dropped onto his shoulder. Even though I had tried my hardest not to cry since his funeral, I couldn’t help but remember how I’d only promised Spencer I wouldn’t cry when he woke up.

But he hadn’t. So, what was I supposed to do now?

“I’m just inserting myself into his life and consuming it like it was mine, but it wasn’t. We never…”

 _We_ never were. It was Spencer and I, not us. Despite that night we shared together, it might have just ended up being a mistake to him if he were still here. There was no way for me to know otherwise.

Morgan wasn’t a fan of my self-pity and reached over to my hand on the tag. He stopped my nervous fiddling, waiting until I met his eyes before he explained in the simplest terms, “He picked you. Not me, not JJ. You.”

It was the most painful smile I’d given yet.

“He wanted you to be able to have whatever you wanted to remember him by.”

I looked around at the things that made up Spencer Reid, scattered around the room. I smiled at the way they were cluttered and disjointed, similar to the way he was when he worked on something convoluted that only his mind could make sense of.

The way he’d have seven books open, with a whiteboard and 3 notebooks in his chicken scratch writing. I knew it would take me a lifetime to read everything he ever wrote, but I wanted to do it.

I wanted to fill the moments that would have been him alive, with what he left behind.

Morgan saw the way my mood shifted, and he finally took it upon himself to yank the shirt from my hands, tossing it into a box as he laughed.

“And for what it’s worth, I don’t think he ever really cared about his clothes.”

Laughing along with him, I pulled another shirt from a different box, holding it against my face while I smiled.

“They still smell like him. For now, anyway.”

He placed a warm, reassuring hand on my thigh, patting it once before standing up. “Keep them, then. Keep everything. For now, anyway.”

 _For now_. It didn’t mean forever.

As he helped me up from my seat on the floor, I tried to tell him how much everything he was doing meant to me. 

All that came out was, “Thanks, Derek.”

“Always,” he said. Somehow, it seemed to be enough. 

— **_One Week Later_** —

The first day I returned to work was as much of a disaster as I had been expecting.

It wasn’t the work itself that got to me, that part seemed… easy.

It was my desk.

My desk was situated right next to Spencer’s. The other agents had joked on my first day that it would only be a matter of time before I switched seats, but they were wrong.

Each day I came to work I would look forward to seeing his nervously bouncing leg as he focused. I would breathe in the smell of coffee to know when he was coming back, and listen for the sound of quickly flipped pages.

There was none of that today.

It was infuriating and overwhelming, to see the bullpen bustling with people like there wasn’t a black hole in the seat next to mine.

I don’t know how I made it through the day; I don’t remember it. But by the time 5 o’clock rolled around, I was still there. Then before I knew it the sun had fallen back over the horizon.

Don’t ask me why I thought it was a good idea, but at some point, I had left my seat, and found myself standing over the still disorganized pile of books and handwritten notes.

My hands smoothed over the loose pages, trying to make sense of the fact they would never be finished. It seemed wrong.

Sitting in his chair, I felt the breath in my lungs suddenly weigh more. With a sharp inhale, I tried to relax into the seat. It still smelled like him somehow, but it might have just been my imagination. Wishful thinking.

It was an impossible decision, whether I would rather organize what was left so that I could keep it safe, or if I wanted to leave it just the way it was when he had left that day, never suspecting that he wouldn’t ever be back.

Eventually, they would clear the desk for someone else. I hoped to god it wouldn’t be soon. I wasn’t ready.

After only a few minutes of staring at the pages, I cleared just enough space for me to rest my head on the desk. Trying my hardest not to let the tears contaminate anything, I closed my eyes and tried to think of all the times we had spent late nights bickering or joking over the work we had left.

The time he showed us how to shoot rockets made of shitty film canisters, or when he would lean just a little too far back in his chair and almost fall. He never was the most graceful person in the world.

Somewhere in the memories, I found enough peace to fall asleep for the first time in 48 hours.

I dreamt of memories slowly turning to dust. The sound of his voice turning to static and the soft, slow beeping of a heart monitor before a flatline. His smile contorting into a grimace and then to nothing at all.

They had never let me see his body, so I saw it in my dreams, instead.

Which is why when I awoke to the sound of my name, I jumped in fear and anger.

“(Y/l/n).”

“What?” Groggily opening my eyes, I saw Hotch standing a good distance away, his hand resting on the very desk I had fallen asleep on. He had that disappointed, condoling look that everyone seemed to be giving me lately.

I had nearly forgotten I was at Spencer’s desk and not my own. Somehow, that made it worse.

”Oh, I’m sorry, sir. I-I…”

“You need to go home.”

It wasn’t the kind of request you should argue with, but I did it anyway.

“I can’t go home. I need to be here.” The slight crackle in my voice gave away how bad of an idea it was for me to stay.

He heard it, too, his hand moving over to place over mine with a soft, understanding touch. The kind of touch you only know when you’ve lost someone you loved more than yourself. It took my breath away all over again, my eyes stuck on the back of his hand.

“I understand this is difficult, and it feels better to be close to him… But he’s not here, and you shouldn’t be here right now, either.”

Hearing the words made them real all over again, and I couldn’t stop the tears from sliding down my cheeks.

 _He’s not here_.

“Go home. Take another week off. And trust me when I say that with time… things will start to be okay again.”

I bit down on my lip as I let the words sink in. If there was anyone I should believe, it should be Hotch. He had lost someone too, perhaps more than I had. But you really can’t compare grief like that, can you?

Still, I nodded, accepting that he had to be right, because there was no other choice.

I laughed through the tears, looking up at him before even bothering to wipe them off. “I think it’s going to take a little more than a week.”

It wasn’t often that Aaron Hotchner smiled, but this was one of those times. A gentle and delicate smile meant to demonstrate just how much he understood the feeling.

“Yes, it will. And we’ll be here.”

He let go of my hand, trusting me to get myself up and home. Knowing that I am strong enough to get this far, and I can get at least one more car ride closer to the ever elusive ‘ _better_.’

“Get some rest and let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

And just like that, I made it through my first day back and I was still in one loosely held together, but still intact, piece.

I wondered if Spencer would have been proud.

— ** _One Week Later_** —

The week off turned out to be just as painful. I didn’t think it was possible, but all the stories I’d heard were true.

There is a certain, unique kind of sadness in the first time you smile after something horrible happens to you. When you realize how upturned the corners of your cheeks are, your mouth fills with bitterness and betrayal.

 _How can I smile in a world without Spencer_?

But I had. It wasn’t even over anything remarkably wonderful.

So that’s why I was sitting on my couch at 11am on a Sunday, sobbing unintelligibly on my couch while JJ tried to make sense of the blubbering.

I’m not sure what it was about her presence, but she gave me a terrible kind of hope. She was always so… okay. She made me feel like it was an attainable thing, which only made me feel even worse for not being there yet.

 _Yet_ , I reminded myself.

Once I could contain enough of my crying to form a coherent thought, I stared down at the drenched tissue in my fingers while I spoke.

“You know, Spencer told me once about how… How every ten or so years, you become, for the most part, a different person. About how most of the cells in your body will have died and been replaced.”

I’d been thinking about it a lot lately. JJ nodded with a smile, a sure sign she’d heard the very same rant before.

“Of course, he told me because he hates that myth that every seven years _every_ cell is replaced. Since you know, your brain cells last forever, or whatever. But…”

JJ leaned forward to look me in the eyes, offering me the small comfort of being heard. Here, I was allowed to talk about him without feeling the crushing judgment from others that I shouldn’t be spending every waking moment focusing on memories anymore.

“I tried to explain to him that it was supposed to be comforting, right? Like, you can leave behind your old life and be a new person. So, who cares if it’s completely true?”

Sensing what was coming next, like the excellent profiler she’s grown to be, she reached out to take my hand.

The warmth from her hand caused the tears to fall anew, cascading down my face onto our hands the same way they’d fallen before.

“But now all I can think about is that in ten years, I’ll have a body that— That didn’t know his hands. There won’t be evidence that… he knew me, and that he touched me and that we existed on the Earth together.”

My stomach twisted in knots as I decided whether or not I should tell her the full truth just yet. Deciding that it was better disclosed later, I rushed to get out my final thought.

“I don’t have an eidetic memory, JJ. I’m going to forget. I’m going to forget the way he sounded and the way he felt, and there’s only so much that video recordings and his clothes can do. I’m going to forget him. What’s going to happen then?”

She spoke with such assured clarity that I was tempted to believe her without question when she said, “You won’t forget him.”

But it just wasn’t true. It had already started to happen, with my mind shutting out the memory of laying in his arms. Already fading was the way his amber eyes flickered in the dim light of our only shared night.

I had already forgotten the way he had tasted when he kissed me.

“The other day I woke up and made my coffee before I remembered to miss him.” I admitted with a small amount of shame. “When it hit me I… I realized how quickly our lives go on and I just don’t want it to. Not yet.”

 _Or ever_.

“I understand,” she had said, the words feeling like daggers in my heart.

“No, you don’t.” I spat it back without thinking, earning a hurt and frustrated glance back. I knew my mistake already. It was one thing to feel and hurt, but to write her grief off as nothing wasn’t fair, either.

“I loved him, too.”

The words lit a rage in my soul that couldn’t be contained. I pulled my hand away from hers, holding it in the air like I couldn’t find enough space in the room to be between us.

“Don’t do that, JJ. **Don’t**. We… we aren’t the same.”

She leaned back, her hands gripping her knees with the emotions she wouldn’t share with me, either. And I didn’t care how horrible of a person it made me; I didn’t want to hear them. “You got to _know_ , JJ. You got to _know_ how he felt about you.”

Just like that, her hands loosened, recognizing the truth in my words and remembering that I wasn’t there to argue with her about which of us hurt _more_. We could both hurt the same amount in different ways.

I just needed to feel the way I felt, and I needed her to understand that. 

“I don’t get to know. I’ll never know.” When the words left my lips, I instinctively bit down on my tongue in the hope that the pain would distract me from what it’d uttered.

It didn’t, and soon I had devolved back into the wailing mess of a woman against JJ’s shoulder.

After another lifetime of tears, I mumbled into her shirt a desperate plea.

“I need him so badly, JJ.”

Her hand stroked my shoulder, pulling me closer to her to try and physically hold in the sadness emanating from every cell of my being.

“You still have all of us. I know it’s not the same but—“

“No, you don’t understand,” I cut her off hastily, not able to keep the thought to myself anymore. It was weighing on me like an anchor, keeping me rooted at the bottom of the ocean of grief.

I needed to breathe. I needed to say the words so that I could finally deal with them.

“I… I think I’m pregnant.”

— **_That Friday_** —

It took me all week, but I finally made it in to the hospital lab. For some reason I had convinced myself that the longer I waited, the easier it would be.

But the truth was that I’d only become more confused.

There was no right answer. If it was positive, I had to figure out how to raise a child without their father. A child that would forever remind me of what I lost. A child I might not ever understand the way he would have.

If it was negative… Then I would have to accept the death of everything that was left of Spencer Reid.

I tried not to hope for a result either way, dreadfully aware of how painful it is for things to not end up the way you expect them to. But it was hard.

So as I waited for the phone call, I took a walk. I took my time strolling down the streets he used to frequent.

I got a drink from the cafe he would visit on his days off. Sipping the much too sweet beverage, I passed by the book shop where he would pester the poor high school student workers just trying to make a little extra money. He was still their favorite customer.

He had a way about him. You wanted to hate him, but he was just so… Soft. Charming. Silly. Cute.

My wandering could only lead me to one place. It was a quaint little park filled with kids and adults alike crowded around a couple of chess boards. I used to make fun of Spencer when he came here.

Now, I wished he could be here with me.

And that was why it was here that I would wait until I learned the answer. I would find out whether or not Spencer had given me one more gift before he left here, in one of his favorite places.

Of course, being here just reminded me of how much he loved being around children. About how badly he had wanted some of his own one day. What a cruel twist of fate it would be, for me to have his child just for him to not be able to see it.

Is that better than none at all? I wouldn’t know. I never asked him. 

From a distance, I noticed someone sitting across the table from Spencer’s normal chair. Even from far away, I could tell who it was.

I wasn’t expecting to see him here.

As I approached, I called out the name to confirm my theory.

“Jason Gideon?”

He didn’t turn around, just continuing to stare at the pieces in front of him as he called back, “(Y/n).”

I was only a little surprised he knew my name. After all, I’d never really met him. My guess was that he’d kept tabs on Spencer’s life. Especially now that it was so much easier, now that it was over.

Taking Spencer’s normal seat, I shifted uncomfortably as I watched the man who refused to meet my eyes. He wasn’t going to talk; it would have to be me.

“You didn’t come to the funeral.”

He finally looked up at me, those dark eyes piercing straight into my soul. Suddenly, I understood why he was such a powerful profiler.

“Been to a few too many for one lifetime,” he drawled, absently tapping his hand against the table. “Not really my scene.”

My foot bounced as the emotions built up in my chest. I wanted to scream at him, tell him that he shouldn’t have bothered to come here after leaving Spencer the way he did. But I didn’t. I didn’t have to.

He knew my thoughts before I ever spoke them.

“He would have wanted you to be there,” I said while choking back tears, “He really looked up to you.”

Gideon just smiled, his hand lifting a piece and moving it a couple of spaces before setting it down. Before he spoke, I glanced down at my phone’s still empty call log.

It had been several hours now. They should be calling me soon.

“I kept telling him he shouldn’t.” The words began to melt the cold that had captured my heart, because I could hear the genuine pain behind them.

“Maybe things would have been different if he’d listened,” he’d finished, looking back to me like I was supposed to make the next move.

“I can’t play chess,” I admitted with a laugh, “and definitely not like Spencer could.”

Clutching my phone in my lap, I leaned back and gave him the best smile I could muster. “But, these games mattered to him. I’m sorry I can’t continue them for him.”

He just shrugged, like he knew it was an impossible request to begin with.

“I’ve never found another mind quite like his.”

 _God,_ if that weren’t the truth. My hand had crept to my stomach now, laying flat against the fabric of my dress. I looked at my phone again, then back up at Gideon.

“He was one a kind.” I swallowed hard, my hand afraid to grip too hard. Like the slightest amount of roughness would shift the odds out of my favor.

His eyes were roaming over me, and I didn’t even bother trying to hide anymore. My team already knew, and there was no one for Gideon to tell.

“You waiting on a phone call?”

I nodded, speaking with confidence and a hint of excitement.

“Yeah, I am.”

“And you’re waiting here?” It was a question meant to ask something else.

 _You’re waiting with him_?

“Felt right,” I confirmed, smiling bigger now as he smiled back. The warmth of my hand on my stomach settled my anxieties better than I thought it would. 

“Well, good luck, (y/n).”

He started to get up, sliding his jacket on in silence as I once again looked down at my phone. When he didn’t immediately leave, I looked up at him in hopes he would have some sort of wise insight for me the way Spencer always claimed he did.

“If it’s positive… it’s a good thing,” he offered. “He would’ve wanted you to have that.”

The words burst into butterflies, lifting my spirits from the bottom of the ocean back to the surface. At the surface, they fell down my cheek in the form of a single stray tear.

“I know.”

As he left, I felt the familiar buzzing in my hand. Immediately, my hands began to tremble with it. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and breathing in the air that he would have felt against his face.

“Hello?” I answered, opening my eyes to take in one of his favorite sights.

“Is this (Y/n)(Y/l/n)?”

“This is she.”

My heart beat faster than I ever thought possible, and with one hand on my stomach and the other holding onto the phone with a white knuckled grip, the world began to spin slower.

“Hi! This is Nurse Myers from Doctor Laura’s office. I’m calling to let you know we got your test results back.”

“And?”

“Congratulations!”

— **_Saturday Morning_** —

You might think that a cemetery would smell badly, but you would be wrong. In fact, there is something oddly comforting about the scent of moss and recently upturned soil.

The soft scent of flowers as they dry and the petals take to the wind remind you that as we return to the earth, new things come back in our place.

Sometimes they come in the form of flowers. Other times they come in the form of microscopic cells proliferating until they form an entire person.

Spencer would have liked me describing a baby that way.

Normally I would tell myself not to think about him so much, to let myself enjoy things without having to link them to him. But right now I was giving myself space and forgiveness.

It was the first time I’d visited his grave since the funeral, and it was harder than I anticipated. Someone else had come, but it was hard to tell who. The flowers they left behind were rather generic.

Still, I sat on the ground in front of them, crossing my legs and listening to the rustling of the nearby trees.

“I had a dream about you last night.” I started, my voice small and awkward in the large space filled only with other stones.

“I know you’re not big on dream analysis. I promise it wasn’t anything extravagant. It was just the two of us at home. Well, I thought it was two of us.”

I twisted a strand of grass between my fingers, wondering how it was people could do this so easily. I was never good at playing pretend, and this felt so much like that. But I knew it was important. It felt that way, too.

“I was sitting on the couch watching terrible television with you like you always wanted me to. And it would’ve been so normal, but… your hands were on my stomach. When I asked you what you were doing, you just kissed my belly button like it was an answer.”

I cleared my throat, putting my hand on my stomach as I shifted my position, suddenly having trouble breathing.

“And you told me…” My voice caught in my throat to remind me to correct my language. “You told _us_ that everything was going to be okay.”

The tears that fell down my face dripped onto my arm, reminding me of the last time I was here. Somehow I felt like the sunny disposition of the weather was intentional; the universe’s way of saying I should feel happy.

“I want to think that my dream was your way of saying you already know. Because it feels weird to tell a gravestone I’m pregnant, but…”

If I talked enough, I convinced myself that it would make up for the fact that he couldn’t answer back.

“You know, I looked it up since you weren’t here to tell me. Our baby is the size of an apple seed. Can you believe that? It feels so much heavier than that. Next week it’ll double to the size of a sweet pea.”

The pauses were still awkward. My brain was yelling at me to slow down, to leave room for his next spiel of fun facts and statistics.

“I wonder if you would know why they always base the comparisons on food. Is it because pregnant people are always hungry?”

He would know. He wasn’t here to answer.

“They say I might be able to hear the heartbeat next week. Morgan said he would come with me to my appointment.”

Morgan was honestly one of the only reasons I was still sane at this point. I had assumed I would be leaning on JJ more, but after a few visits I just felt like I was drowning whenever I was with her.

I couldn’t exactly place it, and I know that probably made me a bad profiler. But something about her lately just made me feel like she was hiding something from me, and I didn’t have the emotional energy to try and figure out what.

If she was in love with Spencer, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to try and argue over which of us had a better claim to his heart. I didn’t want to think that he might have picked her if he were still here.

I just wanted to be able to deal with what I had, and trust that we would come back together again with time.

“I hope you don’t mind but I already told him he could be the godfather. I know the kid isn’t even born yet, but… he’s really stepped up,” I explained to the stone that marked space on this earth for the father of my child.

I don’t think he would mind Morgan being the godfather. I think he would have picked him regardless. Especially if he could see everything he’s done for me so far.

“He’s not you,” I felt the need to preface, “But he’s here, and he’s trying. So if heaven turned out to be real and you can hear me just… look out for us, please. We miss you.”

I leaned forward on my knees, readjusting the bouquet to better fan the flowers across the dirt. I only paused for a moment to think about how he would feel about me sitting on the filthy ground in a cemetery while pregnant with his child.

This time, the thought brought a smile to my face.

“I miss you, pretty boy.”

— **_Monday Morning_** —

It was my final stop on my current journey of visiting Spencer’s life, and I had saved it for last for a reason.

The Bennington Sanitarium was quiet today, with only a few visitors. I guess that made sense; most people were at work. I could see Diana sitting by the window, reading a familiar book.

When I entered the room, she didn’t move, seemingly fixed on the pages in front of her. As I took a seat next to her, she still remained silent until I spoke.

“Hey Diana, it’s been awhile.”

Truthfully, it’d only been a few weeks, but I felt guilty. Like I should see her more often, even though I wasn’t the one Spencer trusted to take care of her.

Finally glancing up at me with only quick, flickering looks, she kept the book open in her hands.

“You’re Spencer’s friend. You look different,” she said with a small twitch of the neck, like my presence made her remember something painful.

“Yeah, that’s me. And you’re right, I-I haven’t been sleeping well,” I explained with a small laugh, running my hand through my ratty hair.

“Sleep is important,” she briefly lectured, “You should sleep more.”

I nodded, recognizing the way she worried. Spencer was always worried that he might turn out to be like his mother, but I know he was also proud to share so much of her characteristics. After all, they were both beautiful, brilliant, and kind.

“Thanks. I’ll try. You’re reading Chaucer again?”

My gesturing to the book in her hands seemed to remind her of what she was doing. It wouldn’t take much effort for her to read the book. She had basically read it to Spencer hundreds of times as he grew up. It was one of his favorites.

“Yeah,” she said sadly “Reminds me of my son.”

Diana had her good and bad days, and it was honestly difficult to tell which was which. The only way for me to really be able to tell if she remembered what had happened would be to ask her. But I would never do that to her or myself.

So instead I just nervously rubbed my arm in a half hug, unsure of what to do next.

For a moment I almost asked her to read it to me. But the words didn’t come out, because shortly after the idea came to me, the nausea washed over me like a tidal wave.

“E-Excuse me,” I called as I promptly stood up, running off to the bathroom. After barely making it, I tried to collect myself.

There were so many decisions associated with being here that I had never actually taken the time to make. Should I tell Diana I was pregnant? Should I tell her it’s Spencer’s child? When the child is born, should they meet her?

It was too much all at once, and the harder I thought about it, the sicker I got.

The worst part was how selfish I felt in wanting to tell her. I wanted to hear her tell me that things were going to be okay. I wanted her to know so that I could come back when my baby was able to hear, because I wanted her to read to them.

I wanted so badly to share this with someone who loved Spencer just as much, if not more than I do.

It was just our luck, then, that she was also too unstable to withstand that kind of thing. It wasn’t her fault.

Deciding they were problems for another day, I managed to clean myself up to return to her. My hands were still shaking with the residual adrenaline associated with puking your guts out in a sanitarium bathroom, and she quickly noticed.

“Sorry, I—” I started to explain, but she cut me off.

“You’re not sick, are you? That’ll happen if you don’t sleep.”

If only it were that simple.

“No, I’m not sick I’m… pregnant.” The second the word escaped my lips, I felt a weight lift from my chest. I know she wouldn’t know the full context; that I had come here specifically because I was pregnant, but it still felt so much better to know that his mother knew.

It made it feel real.

“Oh. Morning sickness.” She said with a small, sympathetic smile. “I had it terrible when I was pregnant with Spencer. I don’t know why I was surprised when he turned into such a handful.”

I began to laugh, full-hearted and without reservation. I wondered what hers and Spencer’s idea of a handful was. Snarky? Sneaky?

He certainly was unique.

“He likes to cause trouble, huh?” I asked as she finally closed her book, her fingers tracing the words on the cover. She had that distant look in her eyes that told me there was a lot she was keeping to herself.

“Yeah, he does… he’s a good kid, though.”

She was speaking about him in the present tense, which caused a quiet, yet sharp inhale of breath on my part. Thankfully, she was too distracted by the embossed cover to notice.

“He was the best thing I ever did.”

I felt the wetness on my cheek before I realized I was crying, and I cursed the pregnancy hormones for making me so obvious. Diana didn’t seem to mind though, her hand reaching over to rest on my knee with a small pat.

“Good luck, dear.”

With one hand on my stomach and the other over hers, I gave one of those rare genuine smiles that didn’t have an ounce of guilt in it.

“Thanks, Diana.”

— **_Back at the BAU_** —

— _JJ POV —_

You know that feeling when you were a kid where you did something wrong, and you’re just kind of waiting for your mom and dad to call for you?

Standing outside of Hotch’s office felt a lot like that.

Once I gathered the courage to open the door, it was only a matter of seconds before he spoke up, his voice cold and suffocating in the small space.

“JJ, sit down. We need to talk.”

Great.

“Okay… What about?” I knew it wasn’t the best move to play dumb, but this whole situation was honestly just weighing on me at this point. I just wasn’t sure how I was expected to keep this all together.

Especially since these small moments with Hotch were the only times I could let down the ridiculously heavy walls I’m expected to keep up all other times.

Hotch finally looked up from his desk, the tension clear in his jaw and his hands as he laced them together in front of him. 

“It’s come to my attention that you’ve been interacting with Reid.”

My mouth dropped open to defend myself, but he quickly held a hand up in warning.

“Don’t. I understand this is very difficult but you should realize how serious this is. If I found out, it’s only a matter of time before other people find out.”

I bit down on my tongue, taking a deep breath and avoiding his gaze. I had to try to get him to understand what he was asking of me.

“Sir, with all due respect it’s just… games of Scrabble between strangers on the internet.”

“Is it?” He shot back with even more frustration, pulling out pictures with screenshots of my phone on it. I clenched my jaw as I read the board.

 _Flower, Bottle, Stork._

“These aren’t random.”

Understanding that I wasn’t getting out of this, I tried to sit up straight. I looked him directly in the eyes, my voice breaking as I finally admitted, “No, they aren’t.”

“They’re not about you, either, are they?”

I scoffed at the disapproval in his voice. Like he couldn’t fathom why I would want to tell Spence. Like it wasn’t the most earth-shattering news he would ever learn, that someone was pregnant with his child.

“Aaron,” I tried to appeal, ‘He _deserves_ to know.”

He just sighed, looking down at the picture one more time before he met me with that signature apathetic stare. It was a lie. I could see the way it hid the pain.

“You know he can’t.”

“He’s a smart guy, Hotch— he’s a genius! He-he’s not going to risk everything over it. I can’t sit here and _lie_ to him about— that, of all things!“

“ **Stop**.” His voice was more forceful now to match the way I raised my volume.

“JJ, it makes sense you want to tell him. I do, too. But… unless you can look me in the eye and tell me he wouldn’t be on a plane home tonight…”

The words knocked the air out of me because no matter how much I wanted to fight him, I knew he was right. There were few things in the world that Spencer would give up everything for.

This was one of them. 

“He can’t know.”

Nodding numbly in response, I mumbled to him as I stood up to leave. “Understood, sir.”

“And JJ,” he called as my hand fell on the door handle, “I’m sorry. To all three of you.” 

I tried to remind myself that there was a strong possibility that this wouldn’t be forever. One day, he would know the truth. 

I just hoped that it wouldn’t be too late.


	3. Chapter Three

— _6 Weeks Pregnant —_

“And… if you hear that—“ The technician began, the ultrasound transducer pressing into my pelvis with an awkward, cold sensation.

She didn’t need to finish the sentence; I already knew what the sound was. A soft _thump, thump, thumping_ pulsed through the machine.

“That’s a heartbeat!” I nearly shouted, using all the air from my lungs.

“Yes, it is!” She excitedly replied while I gripped tighter to Morgan’s hand. He didn’t seem to mind, since he was grabbing mine just as hard with both hands swamping mine in his grip.

“Wow, would you look at that. Already an overachiever.” He mumbled, a stupid grin on his face.

The doctor seemed happy to see us enjoying ourselves. I felt for her. I’d already put her through the awkward ‘ _This isn’t the father_ ’ conversation and broken down crying three times.

“I know it doesn’t look like much yet, but would you like me to print out some pictures for you?” She chirped as she clacked away at the machine.

I took a deep breath before I responded, trying not to think about how wrong this whole situation was. I tried to enjoy it for what it was. “Yes, please. And… Is it possible… could you send me a clip of that? I just… want to keep the sound.”

“Sure thing, dear. At least until the next visit. You’ll have a lot more to look at then.”

“Thanks,” I replied with a genuine smile, “I can’t wait.”

After the door closed, I used the damp cloth to wipe the remaining gel from my stomach. It was so strange, to look at my only slightly bloated stomach and think that there was a person growing inside.

“So how are you feeling now?” Morgan asked cautiously, clearly aware of my unease.

I laughed, placing both hands on my stomach as I leaned back in the bed, “Like there’s a tiny person growing inside me.”

Eventually, I managed to stand. He grabbed my hand with that typical overprotective nature he’d adopted since Spencer…

“You good?”

“Yeah,” I lied, “I’m good.”

Morgan raised his eyebrows in challenge, asking me if I really wanted to lie to him. _Right_ , I thought _, we’re both profilers_.

“I just… I wonder what he would have said.” I sighed. He took a seat next to me on the much too small bed in a room too large for just the two of us. We both tried to pretend like it was enough that he was here instead of Spencer. 

“Knowing him? A bunch of awkward and incredibly uncomfortable statistics.” He joked, trying to make light of a situation that would never be alright. I cursed my hormones for the tears that stung at my eyes.

“Is it weird that I wish I could’ve heard it?”

“Nah.” He answered, placing his hand on mine over my stomach with a solemn smile. “But I’m still not doing the research.”

The two of us laughed together, the kind of laugh that holds a promise that everything will be alright again one day. For a second, I even believed it. The room was no longer a cavern, but a small cave, and the sunlight was filtering through the cracks.

“Congrats, kid. Save a picture for me, would you?”

“Of course.” 

— _16 Weeks_ _Pregnant_ —

Getting up on the table was so much different the second time around. My belly, while still relatively small, had taken on a distinct bump that made bending at the hip feel strange and alien.

Morgan couldn’t help but laugh, and I shot him a warning glance with a smile to remind him that I was fully ready to kick his ass if I needed to. He nodded like he knew.

“I know I’m not supposed to say this, but you’re really starting to look pregnant.”

I took a deep breath, placing my hand on my belly while I settled onto the exam table.

“Well, I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“As you should,” he warmly replied, pulling a chair up to the other side of me so he would be able to see the screen from his seat. I turned my head to him, chewing on my bottom lip until I could find the courage to ask the question I’d been wondering.

“Should I ask to find out the sex?”

He immediately put his hands in the air, shaking his head and leaning back to display _just_ how much he didn’t want to be a part of this.

“I’m not falling for that trick. That’s up to you.”

“It’s not a trick!” I shouted through my laughter at his dramatization, “I can’t decide.”

“Nuh-uh. Not doing it, babygirl.”

I pouted, accepting that I wasn’t going to get anything useful from him any time soon. “You are absolutely no fun, Derek Morgan.”

He nodded in agreement, watching me with those dark, sympathetic eyes. I never knew how to respond to it. Truthfully, we’d grown close over the past 10 weeks. He’d known Spencer for longer than me, and had so many stories to share that I’d never had the chance to hear.

Part of me wondered whether we would still have been close if I wasn’t carrying his best friend’s baby, although I knew that was a bit unfair. Of course, we still had a shared grief — Spencer had even told him about what had happened between us that night before.

Maybe it was just the hormones.

“Welcome back Ms. (Y/l/n)! How’s it going?” The technician happily sang as she entered the room. I smiled as I tried to reposition my new body to give the appropriate access to my stomach.

“Well I don’t have to puke every five seconds anymore, but I had to size up my tactical gear so…” I glanced at Derek as I mentioned my new weight, and he just bit down on his tongue to prevent himself from getting into any more trouble.

“That’ll happen.” She replied before looking over at the man accompanying me, “Derek, right? Nice to see you again.”

He took her hand to shake as she held it out to him, and he seemed genuinely excited to be here. I couldn’t blame him; I was, too. But I felt a little guilty for it, as well. Because I was so excited to see how my baby was growing.

I wanted to know what they would look like. Would they look like Spencer? And what would that mean if they did? Would I be able to look at them without crying? When would it become normal again? How would I explain everything to them?

It was still too early to know, anyway. A worry left for another day.

“Glad to be here,” Morgan responded with a jest, “Had to make sure I get my pictures.”

“Well I’ll try to get some good ones.”

As the warmed gel was spread over my skin, I had a flash of an unwelcome and false memory of Spencer’s hands on my stomach. I’d been dreaming about him more often, and part of me wished they would stop. In a twisted way, they made me so happy. But they also made his absence so much more obvious. They made me crave sleep in a way I wasn’t comfortable with.

I almost lost myself in the thoughts, but soon that familiar thumping boomed through the room and took the dread away. My eyes shot open and over to the screen.

What I saw truly shocked me, and I almost put my hand on my stomach out of instinct. Luckily, Morgan’s hand caught mine first.

“Oh, wow, it looks so different. I-It looks kind of like…” I trailed off before the technician took the initiative to finish for my flabbergasted self.

“A person? Yeah, it’s about that time.” Her voice was comforting and proud; her smile warm and inviting. “In fact, believe it or not, your baby is starting to grow their very own toenails.”

Her strange factoids only reminded me of him again. I could hear his voice speaking over her, rambling into a much longer rant on all the different data points he could possibly collect on this week, this day, this moment.

“Some studies suggest the baby is even able to hear you, so feel free to start talking to them.”

I choked on something between a sob and a laugh, my heart aching at the thought of Diana. I’d seen her again a couple of times since my last visit, and to think that the next time I went I could ask her was… Overwhelming.

It was time for me to start asking about the ethical implications of it, and I just wasn’t sure I was ready. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready.

Morgan offered a distraction from the rabbit hole. “Wow, look at that big old head. Which one of you did they get that from, (y/n)?”

I clicked my tongue at his taunt, and turned to the woman with a devilish glint in my eye as I whispered, “Am I allowed to hit him in here?”

Leaning in close, she flashed a brief wink before she spoke. “Only when he deserves it.”

With a brief laugh, I was already back in my own head. The small, robotic whooshing and thumping of the machine was like a metronome of my deepest fears and greatest admiration. I didn’t know how to carry the two together in a being the size of an avocado.

“The heartbeat sounds so much louder.” I spoke softly, trying to regulate my own so that it wouldn’t drown out this chance to hear a piece of Spencer.

“Well, it’ll be a few more weeks until your baby has a full grown heart so, you still have even more to look forward to.” She replied, subtly correcting my understanding that what I heard was in fact a true ‘ _heartbeat_.’

Was it normal to feel so connected to something that was barely in existence? Of course, I’m sure it was. After all, evolution made us this way, right?

“Speaking of looking forward… Did you want to know the sex?”

I clenched my eyes shut at the question. Despite anticipating it, I still hadn’t come up with a single satisfying answer. I had no fucking clue.

“… Yes?” It was more a mumble than a word. She didn’t seem convinced.

“You don’t sound very sure.”

 _Okay_ , I thought, _apparently, everyone is a profiler today_. But honestly, it wasn’t that surprising. I couldn’t have been clearer about how uncomfortable and terrified this whole situation made me.

“It’s… I don’t know. I feel weird. I just… wish I could ask their dad.”

She knew about my situation, but still had no idea how to navigate it. I’m sure I wasn’t the first person here under these circumstances. It was one of those things that never became normal.

“I can give it to you in an envelope if you want to wait.” She offered, enough confidence in her voice to make the idea sound logical.

Awkwardly, I shifted before I pointed out the obvious. “I mean… I can’t ask him.”

“It’s still helpful to think about it sometimes.”

She was right. I was doing that thing where I just felt bad for myself, and wanted her to make that go away somehow. But she couldn’t. No one could.

“Yeah,” I acquiesced. “Yeah, an envelope would be great. Thanks.”

“Sure thing.” She stood to leave, grabbing a warm, wet washcloth just like she had before. Pausing to shake Morgan’s hand once more, I saw her flash him a wink. “I’ll grab some pictures for you, too.”

“Good ones, right?” He called as she left.

“Of course.”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek as I watched them, wondering how different things could be. I was confident that no nurse would be winking at Spencer. If anything, they’d be strangling him.

The visual was so clear in my head, of him ranting and raving about the possibilities and statistics while he gently cleaned the leftover gel.

But he wasn’t here, so I did it, instead. The heated towel felt so cold compared to my memory of his hands.

— _Two Weeks Later_ —

My feet pounded against the concrete faster than my heart could beat. Despite feeling like I was going to throw up or pass out, my feet wouldn’t stop moving.

Because only one block in front of me, I could see him. The man we’d been looking for. It had been almost four months since Spencer had died, and for at least three of those months we had been chasing after the same fucking accomplice.

And we had found him. _I_ had found him.

The only problem with that was that I was also four months pregnant, and lately my pregnancy seemed to be hitting me harder than usual. The nausea had come back, and most days I was barely able to get out of bed, nonetheless chase a grown man through the busy streets.

I couldn’t worry about that right now, though. Not while he was so close.

Just as the thought of the stakes hit me, so did a major dizzy spell. My skin felt like it was on fire and freezing all at the same time. I blamed it on the tactical gear and exhaustion. I’d barely slept the past few days.

The wave was enough to knock me off my game. I nearly ran into a car, and then abruptly came to a stop on the side of the road. My eyes scanned the crowds over and over, but I couldn’t see the man anymore.

Spite was the only thing keeping me running.

“Hey! Officer! He went that way!” Someone shouted to me from across the road. I shot up, bolting in the direction the person pointed towards, without a second thought on how careless the decision was. As far as I knew, this was a trap.

And it was.

The second I rounded the corner of the alley, I heard more than felt someone smack against the back of my head. By some grace of God, I didn’t lose consciousness. I liked to think that maybe it was Spencer looking out for me.

Still, I hit the ground face first, my hands shielding my stomach with all that the useless bones were worth. _Why_ did I go out in the field? That was the last thought I had before my face smashed into the pavement.

Struggling for my weapon, I felt the familiar taste of iron and regret fill my mouth, my mind blurring reality and nothingness. I could hear Morgan yelling, followed by gunshots and my name on his lips.

He was there. He was trying to tell me I was safe. I believed him. He was going to help me. But then I saw Spencer calling to me in a dream and I decided to go to him, instead.

— _That Night_ —

The soft humming of the machines was what first alerted me that I was in a hospital. I couldn’t remember why. Some deeply rooted part of me hoped that it was me waking up to find that the past five months had been a horrible coma dream.

The pain in my stomach and head told me that probably wasn’t true. I could hear the beeping alerting me of my own spiking heart rate as my body jolted awake. I felt… cold.

Morgan woke up at the same time I did, probably from the startled rustling of my sheets. There was a vague distance in his stare that was anything but comforting.

“Where am I?” I asked, not really looking for the location so much as an explanation, “What happened?”

“You’re in the hospital.” He knew that wasn’t what I was asking. “You blacked out,” he followed.

“Oh…” The memories hit me much like the blunt object used to disarm me earlier, “Is everything okay? Did you get him?”

Trying to sit up, I realized there was a deep pain in my stomach. It had been there before, I remembered, but it felt different. The room was freezing, but I paid it no mind. Hospitals usually were.

“Yeah, I got him.”

It took me a moment to notice he’d avoided my first question. _Is everything okay_? Why didn’t he answer that question?

That stare was back, and somehow more forlorn than before. He had his hands folded in front of him like he always did when he was about to give someone the worst news of their life.

Even more upsetting than that image was the distinct emptiness I felt inside.

“What’s wrong?” The beeping beside me became faster, and in a way it felt louder, too. He didn’t answer.

“Morgan, what happened?”

I placed my hand on my stomach, but it all felt wrong.

“Is… Is my baby okay?”

“(Y/n), just get some rest.”

The world was falling in around me, and I suffocated on the dust of the wreckage before the walls even hit the ground. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t see. The blinding fluorescent lights of the intensive care unit felt like darkness.

“What do you mean?” The words rung hollow, “Is my baby okay?”

The doctor walked in, a young woman who barely had a second to speak before the weight of my stare threatened to crush her where she stood.

“Is my baby okay?” I asked once more.

She didn’t need to speak. I saw the answer in her eyes. I was a profiler, and I had already known the second I woke up. I just didn’t want it to be true.

“Ms. (Y/l/n), I’m so sorry but—“

Her voice felt like sandpaper on my feverish skin. The bleak, pungent odor of disinfectant felt so different than only a few weeks before, when they had held a machine to my stomach and showed me the face of my child.

“You… You were bleeding when you came in and it appears that you’ve lost the pregnancy,” she explained, despite the obvious indicators that I couldn’t hear her, “I’m very sorry.”

“He killed my baby.”

My eyes were fixated on the wall, listening to the new sound of my heart slowing back down, settling into a detached state of numbness that would have been terrifying if I could feel anything at all.

“You… miscarried before the accident, Ms. (Y/l/n).” The woman spoke cautiously, almost like she was confused and scared that any words might cause me to lash out at her. I wanted to.

“What?” I asked, turning back to her with the same dead eyes, “What are you saying?”

“When you came in you were already in sepsis.” She was looking down at the chart in her hands, flipping through the pages frantically like the words on the page would mean anything to me. “That’s… why you’re here.”

“No… That’s not…”

I wanted to say it wasn’t possible, but I knew that it was. I knew so strongly that something was wrong that my brain had ignored the possibility altogether.

Now, the numbness was receding and sending me straight into a state of pure panic and hatred. The doctor turned to Morgan with hope that he could make the situation better, but he was equally powerless.

“Are you the father?” I heard her ask. 

“No,” he said quietly, “No, I’m not.”

— _Two Months Later_ —

Time passed so much slower after Spencer died, so why did it pass so much faster after our baby died? I thought maybe it was just the universe correcting itself, returning to normal speed. Maybe it just felt faster.

Regardless of the physics of it all, two months had come and gone, and I had finally cleared my counseling. It couldn’t have come sooner.

Because today was the day that Morgan gave me the call I’d been waiting for. They had him.

After six months of painstaking work, the man who killed Spencer Reid was in our custody.

There was no possible way for me to get to the BAU fast enough, but I tried anyway. The sound of my sirens blaring down the back streets of Virginia felt like the swan song of my grief.

For once, I couldn’t hear my heart over my breath, and the bizarre combination of anger, hatred, and happiness swelled inside of me like the perfect storm. Today I could stare into the face of the man who took everything from me, and I could take it from him in return.

Or so I thought.

No sooner than I had stepped off the elevator, I felt a strong hand cut off my path. Hotch stood in front of me like he had been waiting for me, with that same cold, yet sympathetic stare.

“(Y/l/n), you can’t.”

He didn’t bother explaining what he was talking about; we both knew. And maybe it was stupid to fight with my boss, but I didn’t care. Moving his hand off my shoulder with more force than necessary, I scoffed. 

“Yes, I fucking can.”

He sighed, his frustration evident in the way his jaw tensed between his words. “He knows how you feel about Reid. It’s not going to end well. He’s gotten to you once before already.”

“This is different,” I pleaded, tears already filling my eyes. 

“You’re right,” he conceded before adding, “It’s worse.”

Biting down on my cheeks, I glanced over at the door to the room just as Morgan stepped out. The eye contact he made with me was that pitiful look he’d given any time Spencer was brought up around me.

“Hotch, I’ve been waiting _six months_ for this.” I begged my voice to stop shaking, to end the crackling that gave away everything I wasn’t saying. “You have to let me in there. He— He killed Spencer.”

I paused, my eyes shutting as my hands turned to fists hard enough to hurt. “He killed my **baby** , Hotch.”

“I know. That’s why you can’t be in there.”

Trying to slow down my thoughts and my lungs, I held my hands up to prevent myself from turning them to fists. The gun on my hip had never felt so heavy.

He was _right there_.

“If I can’t… Who is going to do it, then?” I managed to ask, unable to imagine who else on the team would know more about this case than me. Morgan was the only one who came close, and I highly doubt he didn’t want me in there.

“…That’s why I tried to call you here myself.”

There was something in his voice that set off my profiler brain, warning me that something was coming that I wasn’t going to like. It wasn’t just the words, which were equally terrifying, but his entire demeanor. He looked like a child that was about to tell his mother he’d broken her favorite vase.

And the thing was, I was scared, too. So I didn’t question him yet. I just followed him into the conference room, taking the same seat next to where Spencer would have been. No one had claimed it, yet. I wouldn’t let them if they tried.

So why were there books on the table beside it?

Hotch stood at the front of the room with his hands crossed over his chest, his eyes meeting those of everyone in the room, except mine. The worry I felt exponentially increased with every passing second.

“Six months ago I had to make a decision that affected this team,” he started with the volume to denote confidence, but his voice held none of the other indicators. “As you all know, Spencer lost a lot of blood after his encounter at the warehouse…”

My vision rocked at the sound of his name, the memories like a freight train over my body. Images of his blood coating my hands, legs, and arms. The smell of irises at his grave. The taste of tears and whiskey on my breath.

They all came to a grinding halt when Hotch’s voice rang through the somber silence.

“But the doctors were able to stabilize him.”

Goosebumps and nausea filled every inch of me, my heart stopping dead in my chest before trying to leap through my throat. I begged time to slow down again, to let me catch up, but it kept going in fast forward.

“What?” I spoke, but didn’t recognize the word.

“He was airlifted to Bethesda under a covert exfiltration. His identity was strictly need to know until he was well enough to travel. He was reassigned to Paris where he was given several identities, none of which we had access to for his security.”

He said the words so effortlessly, like they were the obscure local newspaper headlines he’d received the previous weekend. But they weren’t so carefree; they were _suffocating_.

“He’s… alive?”

I felt everyone’s eyes immediately turn to me, my skin somehow paradoxically burning and freezing. The room felt so small, but the space between his chair and my own felt so large.

I watched it, wondering how time and space could bend so freely. How could they all not see it?

“I take full responsibility for this decision,” Hotch said, the first to break the attention from myself, “If anyone has any issues, they should be directed toward me.”

Morgan’s entire body lurched forward, his arms hitting the desk with unbridled rage. “Any _issues_?” He spat, “Yeah, I got _issues_.”

“Where is he now?” Garcia, the voice of reason tried to prevent the brawl that felt like it was fast approaching. With both hands perched on the edge of the table, I was just trying to find the strength to stand up.

I had to leave. I had to move. I couldn’t stay here. My heart felt like a bomb, and if I didn’t get out soon, I would take out everything inside the room, the building, the entire fucking base.

The sound of the door clicking open filled the room despite the tension permeating it. My back was to it, but I didn’t need to turn around to see who it was.

“… Hi, everyone.”

The vacant stares in the room slowly made their way from the man in my shadow back to me. They surely saw the panic in my features, the pounding of my pulse in my throat.

His fingers curling over the lip of his chair was the first part of him I saw, and my body immediately sprung into action. I couldn’t see him. If I saw him, it would become real again.

So I ran. I bolted out of the door without ever looking back, trusting my intuition to take me anywhere but here. And it would have, if it hadn’t been stopped.

“(Y/n), wait!”

His hand was the first thing to touch me again, grabbing hold of my wrist and jerking my body to a stop. Any thoughts I had were short wiring, the warmth of his touch felt like a fire.

“Please, let me expla—”

When I saw his face again, risen from the grave, I watched it collide with my open hand. The volume was too powerful, too loud as I shouted in the bullpen that felt like it only contained the two of us.

“ **Don’t!** ”

My hand stung with the evidence he was real. His face stayed turned away from me, his breath heavy and hurting.

 _Don’t what?_ I thought, _Don’t explain? Don’t touch me?_ I couldn’t decide, so I just repeated the word and hoped he would understand.

“… Just… _Don’t_ , Spencer.”

Sensing the way my hand shook uncontrollably under his, he let it go. It fell away from him like a bitter goodbye, returning to me unhurried. Even now, when I hated him, my body tried to keep him near.

I forced it away, carrying myself to the bathroom where I once again found myself on my knees, trying to purge things that would never come up.

Between the dry heaving, I stared at my hands like they would be able to turn back time themselves. When I would rewind too, I didn’t know. Before he was gone? Before he had betrayed me? Before he had come back?

Having him here again was everything I’d craved and prayed for. But not like this.

Because now I knew that when it came down to things he could leave behind, I was one of them.

I tried to push the thought away, to ground myself enough to get through this case. No, I just had to get through today. Whether he was here or not, I needed this chapter of my life to end.

This wasn’t just about him, anymore. It was also about me; my grief and my life without him.

Picking myself up all over again, I put one foot in front of the other until I was back in the conference room. Passing by my chair, I found the seat next to Morgan’s and sat with unsteady legs.

Trying to hide my shaking hands from the rest of the team, I placed them in my lap. I felt Spencer’s eyes glued to me, but I stared straight ahead.

Somehow, I spoke without screaming. The meeting proceeded as normal, save the way my hands continued to tremble. But soon those would stop, too. Because from the seat next to me, Morgan took my hands in one of his.

The strength the small gesture afforded me would be enough to carry me through the meeting.

And when it was over, Spencer followed me out the door towards our desks. By the time I looked over to him, he had looked away. My sixth sense told me I did the same thing to him seconds later.

My hand instinctively went to hold my stomach, but stopped halfway there and rested on my chair, instead. From my peripherals, I saw his fingers brush over the tear stained documents scattered over his desk just like he’d left them.

We didn’t look at each other anymore after that.


	4. Chapter Four

— _One Week Following Spencer’s Return_ —

The week following my return home felt like a blur. With the way my mind works, things never feel that way to me.

Usually, I have perfect recall; this time, I could barely remember going through the motions. I don’t know if it was the exhaustion, the shock, or the trauma that turned crystalline images into cloudy shards, but I thanked whatever force was at play. It was the worst week of my life, and I had survived _two_ separate encounters with death before now.

I just wanted everything to go back to normal. I wondered if that was even a possibility.

These weren’t appropriate thoughts to have while driving a giant government SUV, but I had them, anyway. It was hard not to, because beside me in the passenger seat was a very silent and frustrated (y/n).

We’d exchanged several words since my return, but always about work, and never in any great detail. I was honestly surprised she had agreed to ride back with me. Then again, she hadn’t really been given a choice. Everyone else was heading to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit and for some reason, she couldn’t go, and everyone had agreed she shouldn’t drive.

I didn’t ask about it; I was just grateful to have a chance to be alone with her. Even like this.

Some twisted part of me hoped the proximity alone would be enough to bring us back together, but I knew that was unlikely. It couldn’t hurt to try though, I thought.

“(Y/n), I—“

“Is this about the case?” She immediately responded, overlapping with the very beginning of my attempts at a conversation.

“No.”

“Then I don’t want to talk about it.”

It was in moments like these I really wished that I could trade a few dozen IQ points for the common sense and social skills everyone else seemed to possess.

“Please, we can’t keep doing this.” I lifted a hand from the wheel as I spoke, rubbing it over my tired eyes for a second before returning my attention back to the road. I tried not to look at her yet. Because every single time I looked at her, I devolved into a disaster.

But she was ignoring me now, and my peripheral vision told me that she was staring out the window. She was avoiding looking at me, too, and I didn’t know what to make of that.

“Are you just going to ignore me forever?”

“I made it six months without you, Spencer. I was ready to do it forever.” 

Any words that would have come out were stopped by my jaw clenching shut so tightly I thought my teeth might crack under the pressure. I didn’t have a response to that. At least, not one that didn’t end in both of us screaming through fits of tears.

So, I let it go, and the rest of the ride continued in a suffocating silence. And once we got back to the local sheriff’s station, we sat in silence there, too. The room was just as small as the SUV, but she managed to maneuver the space without ever once touching me or looking at me at all.

When Hotch finally got back, I saw the two of them through the thick, cloudy plexiglass of the old station. She was crying, but I felt like I was the one drowning in the salty oceans of her tears.

I could take apart a computer and put it back together, but I didn’t know how to fix this. I didn’t know how to mend a broken heart, and especially not one that I had shattered with my own hands.

He caught me staring, but I didn’t back down. Something about the way she grabbed her bag and started to leave told me that she wasn’t going to be staying for the rest of the case.

Sure enough, right before she walked out the main door of the building, she looked at me with those red rimmed eyes before she disappeared from my sight.

She didn’t come back.

I thought I could let it go— to understand that this situation was sticky and needlessly complex— but I couldn’t. That night, after working nearly twelve hours straight, I felt like I was losing my fucking mind.

Normally when I would have to work this late, she would be here. Every couple of hours, she would run to find any place serving coffee that didn’t come from a tiny plastic cup, and she’d force me to look away for just a few minutes.

 _You’re thinking too hard, pretty boy_ , she’d say, _take a moment to think of something beautiful, instead_.

And every time, I would watch her; I would think of her, and it would be like a breath of fresh air, seeming to cleanse my mind and bring me renewed vigor. But right now, all I could see were dozens of photos of butchered women and dead newborns.

Frustratingly, my eidetic memory failed me again. Perhaps perfect recall was yet another thing I had surrendered to my death – if so, it would be the least of my losses. Because instead of remembering something beautiful when I commanded it to, I would see her heavily sobbing over my half dead body.

 _I made it six months without you, Spencer_.

 _I was ready to do it forever_.

The words were playing on loop in my mind when Hotch finally swung the door open, staring down at me on the floor surrounded by dozens of piles of worthless documents.

“Reid, go back to the hotel.”

I slammed the file in my hand down on the ground, running my hands through my hair before he spoke again.

“You need to get some rest.”

“No, Hotch, what I need is for my _fucking_ partner to be here!” The force behind my words scared and shocked me, and I wondered how the flimsy paper around me didn’t rattle at the sound.

His hand almost imperceptibly tightened around the door handle when he spoke, “Well, she’s not.”

“How could you send her home, Hotch?” I continued to blurt out, unable to control the words from spilling out of me, “You wouldn’t do that if it were anyone else! You—You’d make us stay together and work through it!”

Slowly, he shut the door behind him, crossing his arms over his chest as he spoke in that quiet tone he normally only reserved for Jack when trying to explain things far beyond his comprehension.

“You’re right. Normally, I would,” he paused, his eyes narrowing as he watched me shift uncomfortably on the floor, “but this isn’t like most situations.”

I looked away, sensing what was coming and not wanting him to see the way I was already struggling not to cry out of pure frustration of the entire situation.

“Reid, we both know the problems between you two are more complex than Paris. I can only control the aspects of your relationship that involve our work.”

He didn’t pause his lecture, even as I dropped my face into my hands, a long exhale before biting my tongue. I was so tired. I didn’t even want to hear the rest of what he had to say.

Or so I thought.

“I’m not a couples’ counselor, and you should consider that the next time you decide to sleep with another member of the team.“

My body froze the second he mentioned what had happened that night, the memories rushing back in the most unwelcome way while anger burned in my throat.

She had told _Hotch_? Why the fuck would she tell him? Why would she tell _anyone_? I mean, I had told Morgan but that was because I thought I might honestly fucking die.

And that’s when it hit me, the realization that she had probably told them because she never expected I would have to deal with it again. If she had told them, it’s because I wasn’t there anymore. She had believed, with no reason for doubt, that I was dead.

To her, I _was still_ dead.

“Go get some sleep.” Hotch instructed before opening the door to leave again, “or you should go home, too.”

 _Home_. What did that look like? Was it my empty apartment that had been refilled with cardboard boxes of items that felt like they belonged to someone else now? Was it the BAU bullpen, the only place of mine that was left almost completely untouched? Was it the grave?

No. It was her. It had always been her.

— _One Week Later_ —

She took a couple of days off, even after we returned. Her desk felt so empty, almost like she hadn’t been using it for the months of my absence.

I tried not to think about it. It wasn’t my business; she had made that very clear.

But when she returned, she was somehow even more bitter and angry. I thought time would heal this wound, or at least give it the closure to scar. Yet I could hear her voice, raised and raw, ringing through the bullpen when I rounded the corner from the kitchen.

“I don’t want to fucking talk to you, JJ. Have you considered that?! As you made abundantly clear, _we_ are _not_ friends!”

If an argument between two headstrong women was normally called a cat fight, this was more a full-on jungle brawl. I wanted to run to them, but didn’t even know who I could side with. I didn’t even know what they were arguing about.

Was it narcissistic to assume it was about me? No, it’s only logical. Right? 

“You know what?” JJ started, her voice raised but not nearly to the same degree, “I don’t think you’re even mad about me lying to you! I think you’re just mad because you couldn’t figure it out. You couldn’t tell what was happening and that I knew.”

“Are you _fucking_ joking, JJ? You’re making this about you?”

Both of their arms were crossed, but (y/n)’s entire body was shaking. JJ looked more defensive than anything else, her volume dropping dramatically as she tried to step back.

“I just…”

“No, shut the fuck up. How _dare_ you! You were the first person I told. You were— I trusted you and you…” She pointed an accusing finger at the blonde, her voice trembling with something I couldn’t place.

“I don’t even know what to say to you. I can’t even look at you. You looked me in my eyes and you compared our situations, knowing damn well that not only did you get to know that Spencer loved you, you got to know he was alive. You got to _talk_ to him, JJ.”

 _Fuck_. Just as I had thought, it was definitely about me. Even though I thought it would be nice to know that my absence was felt, this just hurt. Two of my best friends were at each other’s throats, and I had done this. I put them there.

And then the tears were streaming down her face, and she didn’t even bother wiping them away.

“What did you guys even talk about, huh? Did he know?”

JJ had finally seen me, her gaze locking on me, wide-eyed and terrified. But (y/n) didn’t notice, too caught up in the words pouring out of her like rain from the first storm of the spring.

“Was my being pregnant with his fucking child on your list of things to mention? Did you even think to mention me at all?”

The words hit me like a freight train, my lungs collapsing as the space around me took the air like a vacuum. Since JJ was too afraid to respond, the entire office fell into silence.

Despite not being able to breathe, my vocal cords somehow scraped together enough power to speak, to break this stifling silence with the only thing I could think.

“… You’re pregnant?”

This time, she didn’t freeze. Her body didn’t tense or display any signs of surprise at all. In fact, if anything she looked relieved. No, exhausted; the fight had left her.

She turned to look at me, probably hoping that my face would give her the answers to whatever she was feeling. It didn’t, and after a long moment of our eyes swapping secrets, she was running off again.

I didn’t even remember I was holding a mug until it shattered on the floor. The sound set everyone into action, with JJ lunging forward with all her body weight to stop me as I tried to chase after (y/n).

“Let go of me!” I yelled, trying to find a way to remove her without hurting her, “I-I have to talk to her!”

“Spence, stop! It’s a bad idea.” She was using her mother voice, the one that calms crying children. But this wasn’t a case of me overreacting or acting out of place. If anything, my reaction was understated considering what I’d just found out in front of everyone.

Everyone who… apparently already knew.

“I don’t _care_! How could you not tell me this, JJ?!” I yelled, finally able to shove her off me. She had succeeded in rerouting my rage, because now I didn’t even know where (y/n) had gone.

“I _tried_!” She seethed through her teeth, clearly just as frustrated. The tension in my shoulders fell as I realized all I was accomplishing was hurting yet another person I loved.

“I-I have to go talk to her,” I pleaded, “I have to…” To hold her. To kiss her. To tell her I’m sorry and that I’ll never leave her again. “She’s _pregnant_!”

“Spencer. She’s…” The shuddering breath from her lungs rang like a siren in my head, warning me of the disaster to follow. “She’s not pregnant… anymore.”

All of the complicated joy that had burned through me like a forest fire had only left ashes in its wake. The coldness filled me again, and I could hardly keep my eyes open, my brain begging me to reject the words.

“What?”

“I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

But it was happening and I couldn’t stop it. There was no way for me to turn back time, and even if I could, where would I go? What would I have changed? Because I refuse to believe in any reality where I didn’t spend that night with her in my arms.

That reality didn’t exist.

“What happened?” The researcher in me needed to know. I needed all of the information I could get, to create some plan to move forward. How could I face her now, without knowing at least as much as everyone else?

“She lost the baby.”

The words felt worse than the gunshot to my abdomen. My mind was suddenly linking information together that I didn’t want to see. It had been six months that I was gone.

 _Flower, bottle, stork_. JJ had tried to tell me. When was that? It’d been at least 6 weeks. She’d made it long enough to have a sonogram, if she’d decided to.

Refusing to cease, my brain forced me to recall that no one would let her go to the NICU. She hadn’t only left the case with dead newborns because of my presence, but because of the absence of something else.

 _Our child_.

“When?” I had started crying, but I don’t know when. I desperately wiped the tears away, trying to retain composure while also hating myself for the possibility of missing my child by a couple of months, possibly _weeks_ , or _days_.

“Spencer, this isn’t my story to tell.”

Her response filled me with rage, and I threw my hands in the space between us before forcing them to cross against my chest to prevent further damage. “You certainly didn’t mind hiding it from me!”

“You know why I couldn’t tell you. There was nothing you could have done.”

“How did it happen?”

Please, I begged any God that might exist, don’t let this be my fault. Don’t let it have been him that hurt her in my absence.

“You know the statistics, Spencer. Fifteen to twenty five percent of recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage—“

“Statistics?!” I shouted, recognizing the non-answer immediately and choosing to reject it, “I don’t **fucking** care about the statistics, JJ!”

“Hey, don’t yell at her like that!” I heard Morgan’s voice before he forced himself between myself and JJ. “This isn’t her fault, man. She already told you there was nothing you could have done.”

But there _was_. There was something I could have done. I could have held her hand and wiped the tears away. I could have tethered her to the Earth and promised her that she wasn’t alone. I could have told her that… I would always be there.

“I could have _been there_!”

“Well maybe you should’ve thought about that before you left!” Morgan’s words echoed through the deepest chambers of my mind. I’d never heard him yell that loudly. Suddenly, the secret glances and warm embraces between the two of them made sense.

“Did you know about this, too?” I asked, even though the answer was standing right in front of me. While I had been on the other side of the world, reading newspapers and trying to forget, he had been here, holding the mother of my child in my absence.

“Of course I did, Reid. I was here.”

“That’s not fair,” I croaked, suddenly unable to raise my voice above a whisper, “I-I didn’t— I didn’t have a choice, Morgan.”

He sighed, bowing his head to display his regret that we’d ever had to reach this point. Once he was able to look at me again, I saw the agony that he’d suffered on my behalf.

“We all have choices, Reid. You made yours.” 

There was a gentle buzzing in his hand, his phone lighting up with her name. He looked down at it before shrugging as if to remind me that this was also outside of his control.

“Now you gotta live with it, just like the rest of us.”

— _That Weekend_ —

Why the fuck was I here? That was the question I kept repeating with each step closer to her apartment door. It was a Saturday night, and the hands of my watch told me that it was almost 11:30pm.

So why the fuck was I standing outside of her door, my hand hovering over the familiar wood? It would stay there all night if I let it. Gathering all the courage and stupidity I had, I knocked louder than appropriate for the hour.

When the door opened, it wasn’t her.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.” Morgan said through a clenched jaw, staring past me like I wasn’t even there.

“Please, let me in.”

“I can’t do that, Reid.”

I sighed, fiddling nervously with my hands in front of me. I swallowed, looking up at him with watery eyes and despair as I begged him. “Morgan. Please.”

“I said no. Sorry.”

He went to the close the door, but I couldn’t accept the answer. I needed to talk to her. It had been _days_ since I found out, and she wouldn’t give me anything more than a couple of words. Every time I tried to talk to her, he was there.

He was _always_ there.

Stepping between the door and the frame to prevent it from closing, I finally blurted out the suspicions that had plagued me since I saw her call him that day.

“Listen, I don’t care if you two are together, or whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. I get it, you both thought I was dead.”

“Excuse me?” He tried to interject, disgust and anger contorting his face.

“I just— I need to talk to her. Then I promise I’ll leave you both alone.”

Silence stretched between us, his hand on the door blanching from the pressure he applied. He was trying to find a way to respond, but I could see in his eyes that he wanted to slam the door shut, even if it would break my leg.

“Tell me you’re joking, Reid.”

“It’s 11:30 at night on a Saturday, Morgan. I’m not stupid.”

With a bitter laugh, he tossed the door wide open, stepping out into the hallway to stare me down at an even closer proximity.

“I’m just gonna go ahead and pretend like you didn’t just tell me that you think that all it would take for her _and_ I to get over you is a few months.” His voice got deathly quiet, almost overshadowed by the sound of heavy breathing, “I’m going to do that for you if you leave _right now_.”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” I challenged, my lips pursing together with fear over what he might say, “Tell me nothing happened.”

All I could see was the anger rolling off of him, the fact that he was coming the closest to crying that I’d seen from him years. “Oh, a lot happened, Reid. A lot happened.”

He licked his lips before biting down, seemingly asking himself just how much of the past few months he wanted to share with me at 11:30pm in someone else’s apartment complex. When he spoke, he did so with a composure I only knew him capable of.

“I had the privilege of holding back (y/n)’s hair at your funeral while she threw up an entire bottle of whiskey and everything else but your memory. I held her while she cried over having to decide what to do with your shirts. I went to every doctor’s appointment and tried to pretend like I could be what she needed me to be because _you_ were somewhere in Paris, pretending like the world could go on without you and nothing would change.”

My funeral. The packing. The appointments. Each one felt like a new wound, another memory that I would have to picture just so I could try to erase them. And he had been present for all of them.

“A lot happened, Reid.” He said with a tremor in his mouth, “But none of those things were what you’re implying. And honestly? I tried to tell her to listen to you, but now I’m glad she’s not.”

The door behind him creaked open so quietly I almost didn’t hear it. But I did, and past my furious friend was her smaller form, holding onto the frame while she listened to Morgan speaking her words.

“Because I’m not sure she could handle you telling her that you think the only reason why she loved you was _proximity_.”

He took a step back, still unaware of her presence, but clearly tired of mine. Pointing a finger to the exit, he whispered with perfect clarity, “Get the **hell** out of here.”

“Morgan, wait.”

Her warm voice saved me from another night without her. I craved the sensation he got to feel, her hand on his shoulder, urging him to calm down. “Can you… Can you give us a minute? Just… I’ll call you if I need you. You can go home. It’s late.” 

Looking up at me with those same, tired eyes, he muttered, “Yeah. Sure.” Then he shoved past me, our shoulders colliding not nearly as hard as his words had hit me, “I’m going for a walk first.”

In contrast, she didn’t touch me at all. She just held the door open, waiting patiently for me to cross the threshold. It felt like a trap, like once I walked in, I would be stuck here until something ended once and for all.

But when my eyes swept over the room, I noticed something I wasn’t expecting.

Scattered throughout her belongings were new things. Or rather, _old_ things. _My_ things.

I walked up to the mantle in her living room displaying family photos, my hands scared to touch the frames in front of me. Eventually, though, I did. I picked up the picture of my mother and I on the day I graduated college.

It felt so fucking heavy, I thought I might drop it.

She was silent behind me, watching the way my eyes were stuck on the picture of me among other photos of her family. And when I was finally able to look away, all I could find were other pieces of me on the walls and shelves. My baby blanket folded neatly on a high shelf next to my first science fair project.

Then on the coffee table next to her favorite seat in the room, was the book I’d spent days looking for. The spine was beginning to fray, and the pages crinkled with overuse, but there wasn’t a speck of dust on the cover.

With slow, cautious steps, I approached it and the woman who stood behind the table. My fingers found the beveled cover but didn’t dare move it from its place.

“Sorry. About the… Everything. I just…”

Her voice caused me to pull back, reminding me that although to me, this all felt like time had slowed down, it was moving at regular speed for her. I was going to respond, but then I noticed one of my scarves hanging on the back of her door.

“I’ll give them all back,” she urged, “It probably seems weird now. It’s just, at the time I was pregnant, and I thought…”

The wrenching pain in my chest wouldn’t go away, and, like the pieces of a puzzle, my mind was identifying the dozens of familiar objects in each area of the room.

She was talking to me, but I could hardly focus. Behind her on the wall was the cover page of my thesis in an ornate frame. Beside it were small, colorful metal dalek toys resting on a shelf.

“I thought it would be better for my baby to grow up knowing about their father and seeing his things even if… I didn’t know what any of it meant.”

I couldn’t breathe, the air filled with the awareness that even if her love was based on proximity, I shouldn’t have ever worried. Because I was suffocating in my own memory, surrounded by things she had painstakingly chosen.

Things that she felt so strongly embodied me, through which she had hoped our child would be able to know me, too. Without knowing anything about my possessions, she’d picked the things that I loved the most.

“Please just say something, Spencer.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

She laughed, walking around the couch to take a seat. I noticed that she’d continued to lose weight the more time that passed. I tried not to picture the way she must have looked when she was pregnant.

“Really? You? Speechless?”

“There isn’t a manual on this.” I said as my hands moved to the pockets of my pants, trying not to touch the remnants of me that permeated her most personal space.

“Why did you come here, Spencer?” She sounded fed up, like she had been patient long enough. But there was no amount of time that would make this palatable.

“I don’t know.”

“Then leave.” She spat, pulling her legs up onto the couch in a typical self-soothing manner. She ran a hand through her hair like she always did when she was preparing for an emotion she didn’t want to face. “Apologize to me, or get the fuck out.”

Something about the venom in her voice when she demanded an apology struck me. It wasn’t fair, but I snapped back just as regrettably.

“Do you think this was easy for me?”

“Honestly, Spencer? I don’t care. I don’t care what you’ve been through.” Her hand waved in the air, gesticulating the same way I did. Which one of us did it first, I wondered. Is this another part of me that she had subconsciously infused into her life?

“I spent the past six months thinking you were dead. I-I held your mother’s hand at your funeral. It took me four days to pack up your fucking apartment because I couldn’t stop crying!”

She stood up, her words apparently never loud and painful enough to carry through the space, “I carried _your_ child, **alone** , for…”

It was hard to tell if the pause was as long as it felt, or if my mind was shutting down. The _tick-tock_ of the seconds on my clock hanging on her wall sounded so loud.

“ _Seventeen weeks_ , Spencer. Four months. ”

The shaky breath that I released held so much more than she could ever understand. Four months? I had missed it by less than two months. Two prenatal appointments. A baby the size of my fist. I could have seen that. I should have seen that.

“Do you understand how hard it was for _me_? When I took that pregnancy test, I hoped that it was negative so I wouldn’t have to raise a child in a world without their father. But I hoped more than anything it was positive because I wanted something to remember you by.”

Her hands were on her stomach, and I’m not sure she even noticed. I did. I couldn’t stop staring; I wanted anything to distract me from the way she looked while she cried over me.

“And I felt so horrible for that, Spencer. Then it happened, and it was real and then it just… I hated myself, and I hated you for putting me in that position.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

I was starting not to believe the words myself. It wasn’t fair for me to ask her to believe them.

“Yes, you did—!” She raised her voice again. Unable to stand the way it sounded, hating myself more than she could ever hate me, I grabbed my face with eyes clenched shut.

“I was trying to protect you!”

“Well my baby **still fucking died**!”

We both stopped then, unable to make words with no air. Her eyes were wild, her teeth bared as she shook from her tears and hatred. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but the word crawled out of my throat, grinding between clenched teeth to land between us.

“ ** _Our_**.”

“What did you just say?” With narrowed eyes and balled fists, she asked me to repeat myself.

“It was _our_ baby.”

“Fuck you,” the words were spoken under hushed breath, “Don’t you dare correct me, Spencer.”

Then we were both speaking at once, my words scraping through my throat while hers were spoken with her whole body, her hands raising to shove me further away from her.

“You weren’t the only one who lost something, (y/n)!”

“How **dare** you, Spencer! You have no idea what I’ve been through!”

When she tried to push me again, I grabbed her wrists. They felt so small and fragile in my hands, and I wondered how the universe ever expected her to carry all of this by herself.

I was angry, and it wasn’t fair. I understood her rage so well. I needed her to understand mine.

“You got to move on, (y/n).” Those were the first words I shared, and tears had already gathered and spread down my cheeks.

“I didn’t know if I would ever be able to come back. I sat in limbo, alone, for six months. Wondering if you would still be here if I ever made it back.”

Her body rearranged itself under my grip. It might have just been wishful thinking, but it felt so much like it had before. Like she wanted me to be closer, even though her mind told her it was a terrible idea.

I wanted to hold her so badly, but her wrists would have to be enough for now.

“I spent six months calculating my chances of ever being able to hold you again. Every second of every day, asking myself how long it would be until you found someone else. How easy it would be for you to forget me.”

She swallowed hard, chewing on her bottom lip and looking away from me. “Well, I hope it hurt, Spencer. I hope it hurt as badly as what you put me through. Because I had to mourn you twice.”

This was the first time during the conversation that I heard falsity in her words. It was subtle yet clear at the same time. She didn’t actually want me to hurt; she wanted me to feel hers, but she didn’t want me to feel my own.

We were both so stupid, so scared, so hurt. It was exhausting, trying to maintain the wall we’d started to build between us. I didn’t want to fight with her anymore.

So, I slowly moved my hands from her wrists, raising them to match her palms. I held up her hands without words, waiting for her to meet my eyes again. When she still wasn’t ready, I laced my fingers between hers.

They still fit perfectly, no matter how hard they trembled. Then all at once, her body collapsed against me, her hands gripping mine like her life depended on it.

“How could you leave me like that?” She sobbed into my chest, and I closed my eyes to take on the pain that leaked from her eyes. “How could you leave me, Spencer?”

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” I admitted, releasing her hands to wrap an arm around her waist while the other cradled her head, “Not a second has gone by that I didn’t regret leaving you.”

I felt her entire body jerk with each hurried breath; her hands clutched my shirt and threatened to drag me to the floor with her as she sank down. Her legs, like the rest of her, had finally given up fighting.

“I loved you.” She whispered, and the words killed whatever hope I had left in my heart.

“I-I _still_ love you, (y/n).” I said back, hoping she might change her words to reflect my tense.

She didn’t, but she didn’t write the thought off forever. Instead, she responded honestly. “I’m not there yet.”

I carried her tiny, tired body in my arms over to the couch. We landed in a tangled pile of limbs and tears, afraid to let the other leave again. At some point our positions changed, my face landing in the crook of her neck.

Vivid memories of what it felt like to kiss her came back with the scent of her perfume. I didn’t stop them, trying to relive all the sensations of the day we both loved each other at the same time.

“I’m so sorry.” I said finally, voice crackling and tearful as she held me, “I don’t know how to fix this. I can’t… I can’t make this better and I just…”

She shushed me, but the words had to find their way out of me. I couldn’t keep choking on them anymore. I needed her to understand.

“I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I…”

“Shhh.” Louder now, she pressed my face against her chest. Her legs wove between mine, our bodies mixing together in an intimate, meaningful embrace.

“Will you stay with me?” She asked, with the question muffled in my hair.

It wasn’t even a question, my body already settled against hers so closely that it would physically hurt to be separate beings again.

“Yes,” I spoke against her neck, wishing that I could bring myself to tell her everything else, “Yes, I’ll stay with you.”

I left off the _forever_. At least for now.

— _The Next Morning_ —

— **_Reader POV_** —

I’d always had a hard time sleeping anywhere but my bed. No matter how many times I traveled, each hotel bed and jet plane seat was a struggle. So when I woke up in the morning, curled up on my couch with Spencer’s arms around me, I had to stop and ask myself if any of this was real. 

I waited, holding my breath and running my fingers down his forearm. He moved, pulling me closer and breathing softly against my neck. It felt too real to be a dream.

My head was pounding from dehydration, the sunlight caught behind the curtains reminding me that tomorrow had come, and I had to face it whether I was ready or not.

Surprisingly, slipping from his arms was easier than I thought. I wondered how tired he must have been to sleep this deeply. I left him be, padding over to the kitchen and quietly starting the pot of coffee.

I rubbed my neck to work out the tension that had formed from sleeping like that. But it just reminded me of his breath and his lips on my skin. Trying to compose myself, I splashed water on my face in the bathroom.

It felt so counter-intuitive, to try to forget how it felt for him to hold me now. Before, I would have given anything to feel it forever, but now things were just so complicated.

Still… It was nice to be held by him again. 

When I got back to the kitchen, he was sitting at the table, staring at his old clock that hung on my wall. He seemed lost in thought, so I didn’t bother him yet. I poured him a cup of coffee, dumping far too much sugar in it before carrying it over to him.

He looked away from the minute hand for the first time, a small appreciative smile on his face as he took the warm mug in his hands.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I took a seat next to him rather than across from him, allowing myself to enjoy his presence once again. Sipping from my own drink, I looked across the table at a stack of papers I hadn’t touched.

Among them was the envelope I’d never opened.

With a glance at a confused Spencer, I reached across the table. The envelope was so much lighter with him here. Maybe it was just because I’d actually slept through a night. Holding it loosely between my fingers, I thought hard about what to do next.

But then I said _fuck it_ , and turned the envelope over, holding it out to him. He put his mug down but kept his hand around it. His eyes scanned the label that read my name and a date from two months ago.

His breathing rate rapidly increased as his eyes swiftly moved back and forth between me and the flimsy pieces of paper.

“Is this…”

“It’s the sex of my—” I stopped myself, subtly correcting to a more neutral term, “The baby. I never… I never decided whether to open it.”

He was holding his breath, and his hand shook with mounting anxiety and curiosity as he went to take it from me. “Are you asking me to…”

“Only if you want to.” And I meant it. It wouldn’t be fair to force this information on him if he didn’t want it. It would hurt, but… Something told me he needed to feel like a part of this. He was a part of this. It was his baby, too.

“I know it’s not the same, and it’s morbid, but it’s the only experience from this that we can still share. And… Maybe that will help us finally put it behind us.”

Spencer nodded, closing his eyes as he held the unknown in for a little while longer. His exhale was slow, but not as much as his fingers were. With acute precision, he pulled apart the weak glue from the back of the envelope.

I watched him as the paper crinkled under his hands. He laughed, a smile on his face as he looked back up at me.

“A little girl. She was a little girl.”

With a hand over his mouth, he dropped the paper to fall back down to the table. I took his other hand, letting him crush it with his grip.

“I had a feeling,” I said with my own somber chuckle, “I couldn’t see much but… she sure felt like a daddy’s girl.”

He frantically wiped at his face, trying to keep a smile so that it wouldn’t dare turn to a frown. It was a strange feeling, this grief. Because as awful it was that she was gone, she had existed. She was real, and she was ours.

“I know I have no right to ask but could I… can I see her?”

“Yeah,” my inflection raised as I pulled out my phone, “I think you should.”

Upon seeing the grey outline of a play button, his eyes lit up with excitement. “This is a—“ He turned to me, and I just nodded to confirm. He wasn’t expecting me to have the foresight to ask for a recording, but I had.

I had wanted to remember every step of this story, and now he got to be there. It was just a strange coincidence, that he would be here to hear the sounds I’d unintentionally saved for him.

That rough, quick whooshing _thump, thump, thump_ filled the room, and the look on his face caused goosebumps to spread across my skin. His mouth was open in an effortless smile, his brows knitted and his hand clinging to me and the phone.

We stayed like that for a while. Every time the video ended, he would play it again, trying to see every single shadow of the picture so that he could never forget them again. I watched him trace the outline of her with his finger that looked so big compared to the image.

The same hands that had held my stomach in my dreams. The same ones that held me last night.

“I would have been a terrible father.”

He was looking at me now, putting the phone down gently like it might break if he were any quicker about it. Everything felt lighter when he looked at me like that. Like everything would be okay again one day, and that we could start that future together.

Deciding to test the waters, I bumped into him with my shoulder. He looked at me carefully, unable what to expect.

“Dead or alive?”

“Stop!” To my surprise and delight, he laughed. It was full of the same complex web of emotions that I thought I would have to carry alone forever. “That’s not funny.”

He’s right, it wasn’t. But it also kind of was. Because he wasn’t dead. He was here, and we were holding hands again. I don’t even know when it happened, or why. I was just glad that it did.

“You’ll be a great father, Spencer.” This time, it wasn’t a joke. I put my other hand on his arm, but it couldn’t stay still. It flowed up to his shoulder and around the back of his neck. “Whenever it happens. Because it will. And your wife will be very lucky.”

He was holding something back; we both were. Caught in a stalemate, we looked into each other’s eyes and both silently wondered if we could actually read the thoughts we saw.

My suspicions were confirmed when Spencer’s hands cupped my face, pulling me forward before I had a chance to put a word in edgewise. His lips met mine with the same longing I’d felt that night.

It was true, what he said—He’d never stopped thinking of the chance to hold me again. I could feel it in his kiss.

Which is why, despite my fear, I kissed him back. And when his tongue requested entrance, I let him in. I took everything he offered; our mouths much more useful at sharing our thoughts this way. We had said enough.

His strong arms wrapped around me, lifting me off my chair and onto him, albeit momentarily. Because almost immediately after, he lifted me onto the table. Our movements were frenzied and poorly thought out, our hands bumping together as we tried to remove the clothes in our way.

“Spencer…” I gasped when his hand slid underneath my shirt, working to quickly remove it. He didn’t stop or answer, choosing to kiss me again rather than respond. I let him, feeling the stubble on his face scratch the tips of my fingers.

But then he was lifting me again, carrying me back to the couch where we’d spent the night wrapped within the other. He laid me down gently, pinning me down below him and taking in the sight of me seeking his touch once more.

Each time our lips met, I was simultaneously reminded of how much pain and pleasure had been caused by this beginning.

When he trailed down to my neck that he’d cried into the night before, I fought my desire and gave him one more reminder. “This is a terrible idea.”

“I don’t **care** ,” he growled back as he tugged gently on my hair, exposing my neck to him more fully. “I don’t care if it’s a mistake. I need this. I need you.”

It was my turn, now, to stop him. Pulling him back to look me in the eyes, I saw the way the tears hugged the corners of those beautiful bronze eyes. My voice came out jumbled and unsure as I ranted like he had done six months before.

“Please, Spencer… Don’t do this because you think it’ll make the pain stop. It won’t, and I-I—“

“I’m not.” His voice, this time, was anything but unsure. Using one hand to bring my face closer to him, he rested our foreheads against each other to avoid looking in my eyes. “I just… I want to be close to you again. Please. Let me try.”

“Okay.” It was a simple word, but it served its purpose. Soon we were tearing off clothes, our hands everywhere they thought they might never be again. Once he pulled my shorts down, it all felt so real all at once.

The last time we did this, it had changed my life so much. This time, I knew that it wasn’t possible for me to get pregnant. Part of me was scared that was the only reason he was doing this, although I knew it wasn’t fair.

“Don’t,” he begged the same way I had. “Don’t leave me now.”

I nodded briefly, closing my eyes when his fingers brushed against my now exposed heat. He waited for my muscles to relax under him before he entered me with slow strokes.

I couldn’t believe how easily I had forgotten how gentle his touch was.

His lips were just as soft, catching the whimpers that fell from mine as his hand continued. This time my body took longer to warm up, to remember what it felt like to be loved. Spencer was patient, though, refusing to move on until I was a mess below him.

“Please,” I finally mumbled between my panting, “I want to feel you again.”

Relief flowed openly between us when he withdrew his hand, replacing it with the head of his arousal. There was something possessive and desperate shining in his eyes, and for once I didn’t shy away from it.

He was looking at me like I was the mother of his child, because to him I was. It didn’t matter if that life had never come to fruition, because it had existed, and it was ours.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him down so that I wouldn’t have to think about that moment when I was with him. He swiftly entered me, his hand propping up my hips so that we could fully meet.

After a few strokes, his voice found my ears again. At first it was just my name blended with a moan, but soon it was something more.

“There wasn’t a single second that went by when I wasn’t thinking of you.”

The truth rang clear in his words, and the pain spread through my chest. Because while he had been clinging to my memory, I had been finding ways to move on from his. I’d already started to spend days without thinking of him each waking second.

Sure, he was all around me and for a while, a piece of him had been within me, but after that second mourning, I had just wanted to move on. And then he was there. Now, he was here.

He gently guided my gaze back to him, his hips rocking into me with a comforting rhythm.

“Stay with me, (y/n), please.”

I tried, tears welling in my eyes in response to the reverence of his touch. I thought he had left me behind, but he hadn’t. We’d torn our souls in half and traded them for the other. His body was in Paris, but he was always with me, as I had been with him.

“Look at me,” he nearly ordered, “I’m _here_. I’m _with you_.”

A tear dripped from him onto my face, the saltwater seeping into my skin. My nails raked down his back to demonstrate his physical presence in my hands.

“I will **never** leave you again,” he groaned. I believed him, despite all the reasons not to. 

His thrusts were growing faster and harder, more insistently filling me as deeply as he could and holding our bodies flush together.

It was my hand that reached between us, feeling the way our bodies met in the middle and spreading the wetness across my crest. I wanted him to feel me come undone again; to show him how receptive I would always be to him.

This body was mine, but it belonged to him too, now. Feeling my hand rub fast circles against my clit, he knew this terrible idea was racing to its inevitable end.

He watched me with rapt fascination as my head fell back against the couch, my entire body rocking against him in a fit of pleasure. My walls fluttered around him, clinging desperately to him.

Before I’d even come down from my high, he grabbed the back of my head to force me to look him in the eyes.

“I love you.”

His words were paired with rough thrusts into me, his teeth clenching together as the words were too powerful to control. “I have always loved you, (y/n).”

I couldn’t find the words to respond, too scared to say those three little words back. Spencer didn’t care, though. That’s not why he said them.

My head held steady in his grip, my body continued to beg him to follow me off the brink. Together, we would find our way back to sanity and normalcy. Together, tomorrow would be okay again.

And when he did finally give in to the sensation of love emanating from our knotted, muddled bodies, he said the words he’d been waiting to say. The words I’d always needed to hear.

“I will always love you.”

This time, when his warmth filled me, it felt like returning home. My legs pulled him closer, taking in the sound of his beautiful, breathy words in my ear.

“That… is how I feel. I love you. Now you know.”


	5. Epilogue

The cold exam room air didn’t seem quite as frigid with Spencer’s hand in mine. It had been hard enough to get him to let go of me long enough to get the gown on, and now that I was ready, I feared I’d _never_ get my hand back. Then again, there were worse fates.

“Is it normal to be this nervous?” I asked, settling back into the bed and staring up at him with a look I hoped would express my need for comfort. It became very clear very quickly that the message was not received.

“Well, during the first half of the pregnancy you’re experiencing a lot of estrogen changes, which can lead to a lot of anxiety. It’s supposed to be counteracted by progesterone, but the levels change so rapidly it’s really hard to tell.” Spencer’s voice got caught in that cadence that told me he wouldn’t be stopping soon. With an awkward, nervous smile, I nodded along, too afraid to stop him yet.

“Not to mention the morning sickness you’ve been dealing with, which I’m sure isn’t exactly the most relaxing thing. Of course, there’s also your concerns that you’re gaining too much weight, which I think are ridiculous. You look beautiful. Yes, it’s more than last time but, I’m certain that you also looked beautiful last time.”

Rolling my eyes, I tried to pull my hand back at his unabashed flattery. He didn’t let me, holding tightly in his grip. I had to laugh, looking up at him to see that he’d been staring off into space.

“And with our history, it’s far more likely to experience an understandable anxiety about—“

“Spencer.“

Thankfully, he realized that he’d crossed a line. Before we even got to this appointment, we’d made a promise to each other: we wouldn’t talk about my last pregnancy. I’d answer the questions when the doctor asked, but other than that, I didn’t want to discuss it. Not yet, anyway. Maybe never.

“Yes, it’s normal.” He concluded, sitting down on the side of the bed so we could be closer. “Or at least I hope so, because I’m also incredibly nervous.”

I laughed louder now, putting my free hand over the two of ours clasped together. “I thought having you here would make this easier, but now we’re just both a wreck.”

“I can leave if you want?” He joked, motioning to the door.

“Come here.” With a big smile plastered on my face, I managed to free my hands and grab him by his collar. When he was just close enough to close his eyes, fully expecting a passionate kiss, I stopped. “If you leave me right now Spencer Reid, I will _actually_ kill you.”

Audibly swallowing, he let out a brief chuckle in the hopes to lighten the mood. Deciding to give him a bit of a reprieve, I did dart forward to give a soft peck on his adorably awkward grin.

The sound of the door caused us to break apart, both of our attention diverting at the same time. “Hi Mr. and Mrs. Reid, sorry for the wait—“

“It’s Dr. Reid.” I corrected, edging out Spencer’s overlap by less than a second. It’d become a bit of a contest, really, for the two of us to see who could do it first. I’d won this round.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The technician muttered, flipping through the chart in hopes of finding an answer. “Which… one of you?”

“Dr.,” I said, waving my hand in front of my husband as if I were presenting him to a crowd. Then, with an even more dramatic motion, I held my hand to my chest and proudly declared, “Mrs.”

The technician was looking at me like I was insane. But that was okay, because the smitten look on the man next to me meant the world to me. Then again… he had just joked about leaving me here, so he also needed to pay.

“He’s not a real doctor though, so don’t let him bully you. You can kick him out if he gets annoying.”

Spencer’s smile quickly turned to a pout. He looked over to the technician with an understanding nod. “She’s already threatened me twice.” He admitted softly.

“Noted!” They laughed in response, probably wondering why we couldn’t just be normal. But they’d be in for a long nine months if they couldn’t deal with this. Spencer had barely even talked yet! “I’ve looked over your chart. Looks like… you had a previous pregnancy that terminated at about 17 weeks.”

My heart fell in my chest, and for a second, I lost my voice. I’d known it was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier.

“Yes, that’s correct.” Spencer spoke for me, his hands finding one of mine again. The warmth spread like wildfire through my body, reminding me that I wasn’t alone in the room. I didn’t have to hold this by myself. He was here, and he was ready to carry me and any lingering negative memories.

But the technician didn’t seem concerned at all, flashing us a comforting yet solemn smile. “Well, don’t fret. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything will be wrong with this one. Let’s go ahead and see what we’ve got.”

Everything seemed so much faster now, and I wondered if time really had distorted itself in that time without Spencer. I tried not to think about it too hard, trying to remain rooted in the present. Because I was pregnant! With Spencer’s baby! _My **husband** Spencer Reid_!

… Who looked absolutely, positively, terrified, seconds after the image appeared on the screen.

“What’s wrong?” I immediately shouted, my hand almost going to my stomach before Spencer stopped it.

“Nothing.” He still hadn’t looked at me.

“No, you’re freaking out.” I huffed, offended that my own husband thought I wouldn’t know what his freak-outs look like. “What do you see?”

“I thought you said he wasn’t a real doctor? He’s got quite an eye for ultrasounds.”

The tone in the room was giving me whiplash, and my head spun at all the possibilities of what Spencer saw on the screen. I could only barely hear my own heartbeat whooshing louder through the speakers. “If someone doesn’t tell me what’s going on, I’m going to scream.”

“If he’s seeing what I’m seeing…” The tech said with a nervous laugh, probably wondering if I was going to go through with my threat either way, “then he just figured out that your little one are actually little _ones_. Plural. It looks like you’re having twins.”

“…What?”

Now neither Spencer nor I could speak, the lapse in our conversation being replaced with the first baby’s heartbeat. Choking on a sob, I looked up to my husband to sense his reaction, but he just looked equally stunned. Even when they began to play the next heartbeat, his mouth just hung open.

“Spencer, say something.”

“Do twins run in your family?” He asked suddenly, crashing back into reality and tearing his eyes away from the ultrasound. “They don’t. You’ve never mentioned that before.”

“I don’t even _know_ any twins!”

His eyes welled with tears so quickly, I almost got scared. I didn’t know how to react, my mind trying to make sense of the new information. Never in a million years would I have guessed that this would have happened. The technician, sensing our horror, decided to try and help.

“Well, there is actually a —“

“3.35% chance of having fraternal twins without fertility treatments. But that number can rise two times with a family history. She doesn’t have one, though. Still, her age would factor in since the older you get, the higher the amount of follicle stimulating hormone you have, which increases your odds of releasing multiple eggs during ovulation.”

The technician looked up with a horrified, confused stare. I just shook my head, waving a hand to signal to let him finish.

“That’s also not factoring in her height or weight. And considering the number of fraternal twins has also been increasing annually, it just gets more and more likely each year.”

“Are you sure he’s not a real doctor?”

“Positive.” I nodded, blowing out a deep breath before I worked up the courage to ask the question I desperately needed answered. “So is everything… Does everything look okay? Are they alright?”

Wasting no time, the technician turned to me with a smile full of compassion and devoid of pity. “Everything looks perfect, Mrs. Reid. They look like two healthy babies.”

 _Perfect_.

“Let me go ahead and print off some pictures and you four will be all good to go.”

Once they left, it was just me and Spencer again. Well, and the two little humans growing inside of me. Even just thinking it made it more real, and an equal amount of fear and unadulterated joy bubbled into my chest.

“Twins.” I said out loud, gauging Spencer’s reaction in the quiet, “We’re having… twins.”

But if the big, goofy grin on his face was any indication, his freak out had ended. Even just the sight filled me with relief. “Are you okay?” He asked, no doubt feeling my hand start to relax around his.

“I think so? Are you okay?”

Locking eyes with me, he bit his bottom lip to try and control his facial muscles that refused to budge from the full-mouthed smile. “Yeah… I’m okay. I’m here. It’s wonderful.”

“Yeah,” I said with a laugh, “it really is.”

— 17 Weeks and 4 Days —

It had been a simple case. So simple, in fact, it almost felt wrong for it to be my last one on the field. But I certainly wasn’t going to argue for a more dangerous one. Spencer also seemed quite relieved, helping me up the jet bridge with both hands on me at all times. Although completely unnecessary, it was also adorable, so I let it slide. 

“Well, here goes my last ride on this contraption for a while.” I mumbled, taking my usual seat on the couch and letting out a long breath. These twins were _no_ joke. I’d thought my bump was noticeable before at this point in the pregnancy, but this was just ridiculous.

“I’m going to miss you.”

I turned to face him, sensing the anxieties he was hiding with the simple statement. Time away just meant more opportunities for something to go wrong while we were apart. I was quieter about it than him, but the worries were still there.

“Do I really have to sit out all these cases?” I spoke softly and sadly, “It feels wrong… I could still come with you guys and not go out in the field…”

“Traveling with us _is_ going out in the field.”

I knew he was right. I bit down on my lips, fighting back the tears that were threatening to fall. God, I was so _fucking_ emotional. “I-I don’t like being that far away from you.” I admitted, my voice breaking with every other word, “What if something happens?”

“Nothing is going to happen.”

He sounded so sure. I didn’t understand how he could be. He knew every statistic about every possible outcome of this pregnancy. And each night, he somehow found more. It had only been a couple weeks since I’d banned the reading of pregnancy materials around me. So why did he seem so… put together?

“But what if it _does_?”

Taking my hand into his, he sat so close to me, he might as well have been sitting on my lap. Not that there was any room. “Then I’ll be on the next flight home.” He spoke clearly with a gentle, reassuring smile.

“And after that?”

With a definiteness that warned me of the destructive path I was treading, he spoke again. “We’ll figure it out then. Together.”

Nodding solemnly, I tried to scoot closer to him despite knowing there was no space. The happy chuckle it elicited made it worth the discomfort, and Spencer scooted over while attempting to drag me with him.

“Come here. I want to hug all three of you!” His efforts didn’t work, leading to me practically fall on top of him on the couch. Collapsing into the fit of laughter, we barely noticed the happy glances from the rest of the team, who’d grown quite used to our public displays of affection.

Eventually, he managed to swing his legs up on the couch, letting me shimmy between them to lay back against his chest.

“Can your arms even fit?” I mumbled.

“Yes!” He yelled back proudly, only to tag on a very rude, “ _For now._ ”

Reaching back, I wildly swung my hand until it made brief, weak contact against his face. “You’re such an ass!” I shouted, groaning when he grabbed my wrist with care and precision.

Pressing a chaste kiss to the back of the hand that had just hit him, he whispered into the skin. “Thank you for loving me, anyway, Mrs. Reid.”

— 20 Weeks —

It’s never nice to wake up to an empty bed. And when the bed is empty because it’s missing your moderately pregnant wife, it’s much, much worse. Although previous experiences dictated that she was probably either in the kitchen, sitting on the ground in front of an open fridge and eating food from the jar _or_ in the bathroom complaining about having to pee fifteen times a night, I got the feeling that something was wrong.

Quickly making my way out of the bed, I saw the dim light of the bathroom filtering through the door. Still driven by the inexplicable sense of impending doom, I made it about halfway to the door before I heard it. Crying. They weren’t soft cries, either. It was uncontrollable, heavy breathed sobbing. Walking faster now, I knocked on the door. “(Y/n)! Hey, pretty girl. What’s wrong?”

“You can come in.” She said between her tears, and I didn’t need to hear it again. The light burned my eyes, but all I wanted to see was her.

When I did, she was sitting on the ground, her back against the wall with her arms wrapped possessively over her stomach. She didn’t even look at me when I ran over, dropping to my knees in front of her hard enough that I expected them to bruise.

“Are you okay? Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know. I’m pregnant?” She rolled her eyes as she spoke, her words catching in her throat. I could tell she was frustrated with me, and I felt very much the same. There was nothing worse than seeing her suffer and knowing there was virtually nothing I could do.

But I could be there. I could do that like I couldn’t before. So I tried to be there with her, my hands clearing the hair from her face and trying to bring her attention off the wall she was blankly staring at and back to me. “Come on, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

With a keening cry, the tears started to fall harder the closer I got to her. “I’m scared.” It was barely a whisper, her arms clutching tighter while her head fell exhausted against my hand.

I hated it when she felt like this, because all my words were meaningless. They were completely and utterly useless. But I tried anyway, giving her what I hoped was a reassuring smile while I spoke. “Hey. Don’t think like that. Everything’s alright.”

“I can’t help it, Spencer.” She ground out between teeth clenched shut, “There are two human beings in my stomach.”

Trying to remember that the hormones dictated her emotions more than any stupid thing I said, I rested my hand against her stomach. Immediately, her arms loosened, and her body began to relax. With soothing motions over her bump, I asked the question I didn’t want to ask, but really needed the answer to. “Does it hurt? Are you bleeding?”

“No, I’m not bleeding. But yeah, it fucking hurts. Of course it hurts.”

I swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to navigate this now that I could be relatively sure that it was just another rough night. It sucked to be sitting here with her and not being able to tell her everything I wanted to. She would never believe me when I told her how beautiful she looked, or how proud of her I was.

Instead, I did the next best thing. I offered her a brief kiss on her forehead before I gave her my hand. “Come lay down. I’ll take care of you.”

It was, by far, the happiest I’d seen her yet. Despite the tears still streaming down her face, she seemed enthralled by the prospect of being cared for. I honestly couldn’t blame her; it was getting harder as the pregnancy went on. Because she couldn’t travel for work, it meant that I always had to. We had barely seen each other outside of video chatting since she was Virginia-bound.

But now we were together, curled up in our bed in whatever awkward position would make it so she didn’t feel like she was being crushed with her own weight. I turned on the light beside me and grabbed my wallet to find my secret weapon. Wrapping my arm around her from behind, I held the new, detailed sonograms up for her.

“Tell me what you see.”

She hummed for a minute, then started to laugh. “Something vaguely human… and that one has your nose.”

“And this one definitely has your oral fixation.” I quickly replied, tapping my finger against the bottom twin with their thumb shoved fully in their mouth. I got more laughter from her, which gave me permission to bury my face in her neck.

“It just makes me so nervous that I haven’t felt them move yet.” She admitted quietly, raising a hand to pet my hair. “I know it’s normal for it to take longer with twins but… I mean, look at my stomach. They’re clearly there!”

“How about I talk to them?” It was something that we’d done quite often. Usually, it was me whispering to her belly while she begrudgingly tried to go about her daily chores. She acted like it was a nuisance, but I could tell by the way her lips twitched up each time that she enjoyed it as much as I did.

“You’re gonna give them their first lecture while they’re still in the womb? They’ll never want to come out then.” The tease was earned and appreciated, if for no other reason than hearing her laugh for a moment longer. 

“I’ll read to them. And you. You need to sleep, and I know it’s been hard lately.”

With a dramatic sigh fit for the mother she would soon be, she shifted back against me to expose more of her belly for me to hold. “Okay. _One_ bedtime story.”

“Just one? Okay. Let me think.” I feigned thought for a few seconds before smoothing my hand across her belly. I began to recite the same story we’d read dozens of times before, my voice not nearly as shaky or unsure as it used to be.

“ _A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth._ ”

An anxious breath fell from her lips as she tried to relax the best she could, using the warmth of our embrace to stave off the tears. Of course, we both knew that once I started singing, it would be a lot harder to cry. Unless it was from her ears bleeding, anyway.

Still, when I started, she hummed along.

“ _And while she held her, she sang_ ,  
 _I’ll love you forever,_

_I’ll like you for always,_

_As long as I’m living_

_my baby you’ll be_.”

And the pattern repeated, the two of us rocking and holding our children in the only way we could. The overwhelming crescendo of emotions blurred reality, and for a moment I’d forgotten that the rest of the world was asleep. It just didn’t feel that way, with my entire world laying in my arms. That’s all I could think about when we finally got to the last page in my memory. With a scratchy, tear-ridden voice, I struggled through the final verse.

“ _I’ll love you forever,_

_I’ll like you for always,_

_As long as I’m living  
my baby you’ll be_.”

And just as I finished, I felt a sudden, foreign sensation underneath my palm.

“Oh! Oh my god!” My wife yelled, her entire body jumping under me.

My mind was reeling, my hand now more insistently pressing against her, seeking the feeling again. “Did they just—“

“They did!” She gasped, her hands following mine as more movements began. She couldn’t stop laughing, but I heard the tears, too. “Wow.” She said with a pause, “They must _really_ hate your singing!”

Once again, I couldn’t get upset with her for telling the truth. Further, I was so just so ecstatic about what was currently happening against my hand that nothing else mattered. The subtle shifting of their tiny bodies felt like almost nothing to my hand, but it was enough. All I knew was that I wanted to feel it again, and again, and again.

Eventually, they calmed down, all four of us remembering that it was now 4am and we were exhausted beyond compare. But I couldn’t sleep yet, nuzzling my face into her hair and breathing in the smell of her shampoo so that I could remember this moment even more vividly in the future.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world.” I didn’t mean to say the thought out loud, but I didn’t regret it, either.

“Why’s that?” She mumbled back, shimmying back in an attempt to be closer to me.

“Because I get to be here with you.”

She turned her head back to me, shooting a quick warning glance and giving a light smack to the arm still clinging to her. “Stop that, Spencer. I **will** start crying again.”

I smiled, sneaking her a quick kiss on her cheek before she could turn around again. “Me too.” I whispered back, maneuvering my arm under her pillow. I didn’t care if it went numb; I just wanted to hold her as close as I could.

“I love the three of you so much.”

“We love you, too.”

— 30 Weeks —

The commotion of the baby shower was exactly what I’d expected, but it didn’t make it any less chaotic. The team was small, but with all of the other family members and kids, my house was bustling with loud laughter, food, and love.

“Open mine! Mine first!” Penelope’s cheerful voice cut through it all as she shoved a box onto my lap. I eyed it suspiciously, shaking it to confirm my suspicions.

“Is this what I think it is?” I asked with a smile, using the tiny box to gesture to my husband sitting on the floor beside me. “Should I have him open it?”

The poor girl huffed, crossing her arms with a frustrated pout. “See, this is why I hate being friends with a bunch of profilers. I don’t get to have any surprises!”

“Don’t worry, he’s clueless.” I assured her, handing Spencer the box that he took with an absolutely baffled expression.

“What is it?”

“Open it.” I said with a nod. With a childlike enthusiasm, he tore open the wrapping paper and immediately recognized the pattern of the box. Even more excitedly, he popped it open to reveal two tiny pairs of baby shoes that looked remarkably familiar.

Spencer held up the two pairs of Converse baby shoes, each one sporting a different colored shoelace. “Wow! They look just like mine!”

“Except clean. And not _destroyed_.” I quickly corrected, giving him a few gentle pats on the head.

He pouted, hooking a finger into each of the four shoes and holding them to his heart. “I love them.”

The rest of the gifts went by, each filled with a personal memory or touch that truly captured just how long we’ve waited for this moment. And despite how nice it was, with the positivity and joy filling every particle of the home, I was worried. My hands rested on my stomach, the twins restlessly knocking each other back and forth. I winced at the sensation, letting out a deep breath when they finally began to calm down again.

“So… You’re getting there, huh?” JJ asked as she took a seat next to me, a large grin plastered on her face.

“Time flies, huh?” I replied with a heavy sigh.

“When you’re pregnant?” She laughed, raising eyebrows as she concluded, “Not at _all_.”

“God, that’s so true. I swear it’s been a year.”

The two of us laughed, finally able to share the happiness of the circumstances with each other. We hadn’t really talked about the pregnancy, our memories still tainted and our anxieties too present. But something about this calmness within the party felt different.

“Spence seems happy.”

I turned to her, seeing the way her eyes glistened with a deeper understanding than I’d ever given her credit for. She knew as well as I did how much this meant to Spencer, and she was just grateful to be the smallest part of it.

And I was grateful to her, too. Even if I hadn’t really shown her that yet. Truthfully, I was desperate for her approval. She was the best mom on the team, and my husband’s other keeper.

“It’s surprising how happy he is, considering how much I yell at him.” I joked, but she flashed me a smirk that told me she knew what I was talking about. I slightly cringed as I admitted, “The other night I made him bring me McDonalds in bed.”

“What time was it? 3AM?” Her guess was a little too close for me to expect it was entirely uneducated. Knowing their friendship and her hours, he’d probably called her on the way to the restaurant.

“So close. 2:30.” I corrected, laughing when she nodded in a sympathetic understanding.

“Did he put up a fight? I can yell at him for you if he did.”

“Never.” I responded quickly, brushing the idea off with puckered lips. She saw the guilt and secrecy in my contained laughter, her eyes narrowing to hopefully get me to admit what we both knew was true. “And I already yelled at him, anyway.”

Our shared entertainment in the poor guy’s suffering drew his attention from across the room. JJ saw his goofy, lovestruck smile before I did. My hands gravitated to my stomach so effortlessly when I looked at him, reminding myself that this time we were all together. 

“I’m… really, really happy for you guys.”

I turned to see her teary eyes, which meant that I was crying milliseconds later. “Thanks, JJ.” I choked, wiping at my face and clearing my throat to try and look the slightest bit presentable with two human beings wrestling inside of me.

Spencer had gotten distracted again, currently running in circles in our living room being chased by three children, who eventually overpowered him. His dramatic wails as he collapsed to the floor made my heart overflow with pride and fear and something else.

“I just… hope I can be as good a mom as he will be a dad.” I admitted for the first time out loud.

But JJ just placed her hand over mine, feeling the way the two little ones stilled at our touch. She waited for me to look at her before she spoke with such a remarkable sincerity, I had to believe her.

“You _already are_.”

— 35 Weeks —

The house was suspiciously quiet, the ticking of the clock on the wall almost loud enough to drown out the sniffling and sighing coming from the couch. I followed the sounds of discomfort to find my wife with her head thrown back over the end of the couch, dramatically forcing out each exhale.

“Hey pretty girl.” I announced, alerting her to my presence for the first time as I came to stand in front of her. “How are my favorite people in the world?”

Gesturing to her stomach, she groaned before she could answer. “One-third of us is exhausted. The other two are having a goddamn party.”

I removed my satchel from across my shoulder, tossing it onto the ground beside the couch while I crouched down in front of her. “I’m sorry.” Normally, she would correct me for apologizing, since it wasn’t me kicking her bladder (although, I was the one who had put the culprits there). But this time, she just closed her eyes, letting her head fall to the side again.

That is, until I grabbed her feet, beginning to apply a gentle, sweeping pressure across the bottom of them. She cried out with an exhausted relief, followed by a high pitched whine.

“Oh my god. I love you so much.”

The exclamation made me laugh, but what happened next did anything but. Her entire body jerked forward, her foot dropping from my hand as she screamed, grabbing hold of her stomach with both hands. I jumped up to her side, trying to follow her hands, but she smacked mine away.

“How is the movement?” I asked, trying to convince my heart to slow down so that we weren’t both panicking. She knew these questions well; I asked them of her every couple of days at this point.

“They’re definitely doing it. It’s hard to tell with both of them in there.” She choked on the words, obviously holding back another yell.

“Do you think they’re turning around? Or have they already?” I asked, knowing full well that she wouldn’t know. She’d made it very clear that she didn’t want to know a lot about the pregnancy; she was scared it would make her too paranoid, too scared. Which, in turn made me paranoid and scared.

“I have no idea.” She sighed, settling back into her previous position once the wave of pain passed.

“Can I try to find out?” I tried not to make it sound like a beg, reminding myself that everything would be okay if I was here. She didn’t need to know anything that was happening – I could figure it out for her, and plan accordingly.

Resigned, she removed her hands from her stomach to grant me greater access. “Sure, babe.”

Within seconds of my hands on her stomach, I felt a tiny palm follow after me. I never got used to it, my heartbeat wildly fluctuating the longer it continued.

“I bet that’s your little girl.” (Y/n) muttered with a sneaky, teasing smile.

“Are you sure it’s not your momma’s boy telling me to get my hands off you?” I shot back, still trying to focus my attention on understanding the current position of the two people of the hour. I understood why she was confused – the two were practically tangled together.

“He probably heard me yelling about how much I hated you earli– **_Fuck_**!” This time, her hands didn’t even make it to her stomach, fisting the pillow and couch cushions so tightly I thought she might actually tear through the thick fabric.

“Has this been happening for a while?” Now my heart was beating hard for an entirely different reason, my brain trying to count the number of seconds that had passed since her last exclamation.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She didn’t want to talk about it, but she had to. 

“How long?”

“I don’t know. Two… hours…?” The guilt was obvious, her whole face avoiding my direction so that I wouldn’t be able to read it to see that she was _still_ underestimating the time.

“Two hours?!” I shrieked, standing up and immediately digging through my pockets for my phone. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“Because I’m only 35 weeks! I-I’m not supposed to be in labor yet! They aren’t ready!” She shouted back, defensively holding onto her stomach and bouncing her legs to hopefully distract from the painful contractions.

After glancing at the time on my screen, I glanced back down at her for just a few seconds before I frantically urged, “We have to go to the hospital. _Right now_.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” She groaned.

“I’m not.”

“Yes you – Ah!” She couldn’t even get through the sentence, but this time it wasn’t her scream that alerted me of the quickly worsening situation.

Once the wave had passed, and her breathing started to steady again, I pointed to her legs. “Your water just broke.”

“… What?” She asked under her breath, shifting her legs to see that, sure enough, there was a quickly pooling damp spot underneath her.

“You didn’t notice?”

“Over the sensation of my body forcibly separating to make way for the two human beings you put inside of me? No! I didn’t!” She shrieked, trying, and failing, to stand on her own. Once she collapsed back on the couch, her face contorted in pain, I scrambled to grab the packed bag that sat by the closet.

“Okay. We’re leaving now.” I said, arriving back to her and holding my hands out to help her up. But she made no attempt to move, tears streaming down her cheeks as she started to rock in place.

“No, I don’t want to go yet.” She sobbed, staring down at the ground and rubbing soothing patterns over her stomach.

Getting back on my knees, I grabbed her face with both of my hands, trying to guide her to me as gently as I could. “Look at me. Listen to my voice.” Once her eyes metmine, they locked in, her hands holding onto my shirt sleeves as tightly as she could.

“Everything is okay.” I reassured her, pushing my hand over her hair and down the back of her neck. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Fuck!” She yelled, throwing her head back while simultaneously dropping her body towards me. We both knew I wasn’t nearly strong enough to carry her in this state. At least, not safely.

“Come on, pretty girl.” I cooed, hoping that the soft, higher register voice would work to calm both her and the two hell raisers. She didn’t get any words out the rest of the way out of the house or into the car, but once she sat down, the words wouldn’t stop.

“Oh my god, I’m going to fucking kill you, Spencer Reid. I’m going to actually kill you. I’m going to fucking–” She had to stop to catch her breath, and she also apparently decided it was best to ignore me as I bent over to buckle her in. “I can’t believe you did this to me, you stupid piece of shit.”

“Breathe.” I instructed. I was a little bit entertained by how dramatic her insults got, knowing not to take any of them too seriously.

“Are you kidding me? I know how to breathe, asshole.” She spat, finally turning to see the sad attempt at a serious face I was giving her. It angered her for a second, but then she just wanted to laugh at the obvious happiness pouring out of me.

“Deep breath in.” I said, following the directions myself. After the third attempt, she was following along.

Placing a hand over mine on the gearshift, she sighed, “I’m sorry. I’m not going to kill you. I love you.”

“I know.” I laughed, “I love you, too.”

The rest of the car trip consisted of a lot of that; she would insult me, and I would tell her how much I loved her and how I was proud of her. She would usually respond with an apology or another insult.

I didn’t have time for it to hurt my feelings, because I was stuck in a loop of thoughts on everything that could go wrong on the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital. And that wasn’t even considering all the things that could go wrong once we _got_ there. But nothing was going to go wrong. We’d both prepared for this, and the day was here, and everything was going to be fine.

God, I hoped everything was going to be fine.

Holding tightly to her hand, it took us no time to be placed in a room, the triage nurse basically just glancing at the soaked pants and twin-sized belly before calling us back. Once she had gotten settled in, I went down our to do list that we’d organized months ago.

The first thing on the list was alerting out friends and family, who definitely wouldn’t be able to get here on time. But that was totally fine, because birth wasn’t exactly a public sport. Not wanting to deal with the stress of multiple calls, we’d already arranged for Garcia to make the announcement for us.

Of course, when she picked up the call she was already screaming, blasting me with questions that even I couldn’t keep up with. The last of them was the easiest one: “Has she been admitted?”

“Yeah, we just got to our room. I’ll let you know more when I know.” I couldn’t stop smiling, my heart pounding so hard I was almost lightheaded. 

“On it, sugar plum! Give Mrs. Reid a big kiss for me!” Garcia chirped back, hanging up before I could waste any more time away from my wife. It’d been years, but it still took me back every time someone called her Mrs. Reid.

Rounding the corner back into the room, I found her still trying, and failing, to do the breathing exercises I’d been repeating in the car. “Hey pretty girl, how are you feeling?” I knew there was no simple answer but thought it best to keep her talking.

“Terrified.” She said quickly, followed by an even more slurred, “So scared. I’m so fucking scared, Spencer.”

I didn’t want to give her fears any ammunition or speak them into existence, so I just grabbed her hand with both of mine, letting her squeeze me as tightly as she needed. Meanwhile, I tried to soothe her with the only words I could think to say. “You’re doing such a good job. I’m so proud of you.”

But she could barely hear me, throwing her head back and yelling incoherently until she could speak again. When she could, she went straight back to directing all that anger at me.

“God, Spencer, why did you put two in me?!”

Unable to stop myself, and being the complete idiot that I am, I corrected her.

“Actually, the mechanism of fraternal twins is dictated by the number of eggs the woman releases so, I logically can’t be the person responsible for twins.”

She stared at me with a slackened jaw and furrowed brows between her heavy breaths. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” She warned.

I wanted to take a step back, but I realized I couldn’t with her death grip on my hands. All I could do was plead my case, blubbering back a pathetic, “I’m sorry. I’m nervous.”

She yanked me down in front of her, grabbing my shirt with her free hand that could barely reach over the bump. “You better figure out how to get it together because one of us has to be able to deal with this shit right now and I’m telling you it is not going to be me.” She almost laughed but was distracted by another painful contraction.

It was absolute hell watching her be in pain and knowing that it was only going to get worse. Of course, it didn’t help that there was a voice in the back of my head reminding me that I’d once almost forced her to go through this by herself.

I tried not to think about that.

“Hello Mr. and Mrs. Rei—“ A well-meaning physician announced before being swiftly corrected by both of us at the same time.

“Its Dr. Reid.”

Glancing down at my wife, I saw her smile through the pain. Even through all of this, she still wanted to beat me at our silly little game. I turned back to the doctor, remembering that she’d literally just told me that she wanted me to figure out how to handle this.

“I’m Dr. Reid.” I clarified, keeping my hand in my pockets not because I was scared of the germs he had, but because I was scared of the ones _I_ had. “I’m not an MD, but I actually have delivered a baby before.”

The physician glared at me in confusion for a moment before turning to y/n for an explanation; she, however, just shook her head. There wasn’t time to explain or question it at this point. “Well, Dr. Reid, I’m glad to have you here. Hopefully we won’t need your help on that end. Your only job today is to support your wife.”

“I… think I can do that.” I replied honestly, stepping to the side while still maintaining contact with my wife at all times.

“We love an honest man. Mrs. Reid, how are you feeling?”

It was the question she was tired of hearing, but more than happy to talk about. “It fucking hurts.” She freely admitted, gripping the metal bar next to her with even more strength than she could apply to my hand. “But I think it’s the normal amount of hurt? Is that a thing?”

“Trust your intuition. Your body is smarter than you think.”

I watched the two of them talk so easily, like this wasn’t the most terrifying thing in the world. Even though I knew she was nervous, you couldn’t see it in her face. She looked so… dedicated, powerful, beautiful. I could barely remember to breathe, much less listen.

“My body is telling me these kids are impatient as hell.” She was still cracking jokes, even while in labor with twins and when a man was settling between her legs, trying to gauge the truth in her words.

“That sounds about right!” They answered, “You should be delivering these two momentarily. Are there any plans I should know about?”

The planning and research paid off, because these answers were flowing from her like a script. “No, just whatever is safest. I just want to see our babies.” The excitement was obvious, and for the first time since this started, she looked at me with a pure, full-faced smile.

“Shouldn’t be much longer.” The doctor said, and I mouthed the words back to her while reminding her of the breathing exercises. She mimicked the actions, and the two of us stayed there just like that. Despite all the people buzzing around us, it still felt like it was just the two of us in own world.

I couldn’t tell if it really did happen quickly, or if the time just felt that way. It wasn’t that abnormal for me to feel like I was in a different reality when I was with her. But soon enough, the time had come.

Normally, I would _never_ be able to handle the commotion that was happening in that room. Instructions were being shouted from every direction, and none of them were heard over the pained screams of my wife.

Not until I heard the one thing I was waiting for. As soon as the tiny, high pitched cries sounded, it was all I could hear. My heart stopped in my chest, and (y/n) looked at me with an exhausted, delirious smile.

“Congratulations, Dr. and Mrs. Reid, your daughter’s here and you’re halfway there.”

Every ounce of me wanted to look down, to see our first child’s face, but I couldn’t yet. Because we were only halfway there, and I needed her to know that I was still here with her. I wouldn’t leave her side until she was ready.

“Spencer, our baby.” She muttered.

“I know. The doctor said she’s okay.” I reassured her, brushing her matted hair from her face. “You just need to focus on your little boy now, alright?”

But she started to push me away, her breathing picking up again while she whined, “Go get our baby. I want my baby.”

“I’m not leaving you.” I responded, realizing for the first time that I was petrified. Because as soon as I held that child, it was all real. We were parents, finally holding the family we’d fought for. Every fear of inadequacy raced through me all at once.

I figured that was just part of being a parent.

“Please, get our baby. I want to see her.” (Y/n) begged, nodding her head forward while resting her eyes. “Get our daughter.”

Deciding that it was time for me to get my act together, I pulled back against her hand until she let go of me on her own. She watched me, carefully continuing her breathing and rubbing her belly that probably felt remarkably emptier now.

But just like that, my arms were the opposite. I had barely seen her face before the nurse quickly placed my daughter in my hands, turning her attention back to my wife. But I couldn’t focus on anything else, my eyes stuck on the tiny lips that were still drawing in air just so she could scream again.

She was swaddled comfortably, but I could still imagine what she looked like beneath the blanket. I’d touched those tiny hands and feet through her mother’s stomach so many times. And even though she couldn’t open her eyes yet, I knew that she would have her mother’s eyes.

Rushing back to her side, I held our daughter close to my chest, lowering the two of us down so she could see us without any straining. (Y/n)’s face lit up, and with her breath coming out in heavy puffs, she was still able to laugh.

“Oh my god. She looks just like you.” She joked, closing her eyes and dropping her head to the side. “That’s not fair. She really is a daddy’s girl.” After the brief moment of rest, she opened her eyes again, staring up at the two of us despite the sweat dripping into her eyes.

“Mrs. Reid, it’s time to start pushing again.”

She sobbed at the instruction and its accompanying pain, reaching over to grab my sleeve. She couldn’t tug too hard, scared that I might drop our daughter, but she wanted to be closer to us. “Fuck, I’m so tired.” She muttered, her half lidded eyes threatening to close again.

“Look at me. Look at us.” I instructed joyously, rocking my arms just enough to give her a new view of the tiniest face that we made together. “We’re almost there. Then we’ll all be together.” I choked on the words, repeating them because they made me feel so much that I thought I might burst if I didn’t. “Our family will all be together.”

The chaos ensued again, but I noticed the distinct lack of screaming from my wife, who had switched to whines and whimpers. It broke my heart to know that she was probably too tired to make any other noises, but I just kept reassuring her that it would be over soon. Of course, then we’d have not one but _two_ babies to take care of, but I’d save that bit for later.

It went faster the second time, and before I knew it, the room was filled with the panicked screams of two infants. Once, a long time ago, that noise would have brought with it anxiety and frustration. But now, it sounded like relief. It sounded like love.

“Here he is!” The doctor called out to the three of us, handing our son off in the same line of people that our daughter had gone through. I let out a deep breath, watching my wife’s eyes flitter around the room, trying to locate the source of the noise.

She didn’t have to try too hard, because this time the nurse brought him over to us. Seeing that I already held one of our children, she didn’t hesitate to place him on his mother’s chest.

And it was worth it for me to have to wait, because listening to the sharp inhale and frantic sob from her reminded me of just how long we’d been working towards this. Her hands clung to him, tears pouring from her eyes that were too tired to stay open.

After she calmed down just a little, I nudged her arms open. She desperately made room, blubbering nonsense until our daughter was resting against her, too. I took a step back, taking in the sight of the love of my life, clinging to our two children.

Eidetic memory or not, I knew I would never forget what it looked like. There was nothing in the world that would ever be able to take away the way that felt. It would stay with me until the day I died and follow with me to whatever came next.

She hadn’t even opened her eyes yet when I bent over, kissing her on her still lips. It didn’t matter if she kissed me back; I just needed her to know exactly how much I loved her in that moment. How much I would love her for the rest of existence itself.

But she did kiss me back eventually, her mouth barely moving. I held her face, not caring how clammy or heavy it was in my hands. “You did it.” I whispered, letting my own tears pool on her cheeks.

She opened her eyes, her smile still mischievous and elated. This time, it was her turn to correct me. With both hands holding onto our new life, she answered softly. 

“ _We_ did it.”

— 3 Years Later —

Watching my husband with children was like watching him in a museum; he was simply in his element, doing what he was designed to do. So when the three children in the room monopolized all of his time, I let them. It was one of the few times I got to rest, although I wouldn’t dare close my eyes. With half lidded eyes, I rested my head against the wall I leaned against with a soft, relaxed sigh.

“If you start crying, you know I won’t be able to help myself.”

Without even turning to him, I gave a brief chuckle. “Hey Morgan.” I said fondly, before correcting the implication. “I’m not crying.”

“Not yet, but I know that face.” He held up an accusing finger, a warm chuckle laced within the words. He leaned beside me, watching our kids argue over who got to be the next guinea pig for Spencer’s latest magic trick.

Although he’d never admit it, he always let our son go first. He’d always make the argument that he was late to being born, so it was the least he deserved. So much for having a Momma’s boy. Spencer got them both. 

“JJ wasn’t kidding when she said the years go by so fast.” I thought aloud, finally, lazily turning my head to Morgan. “I feel like it was just yesterday that we brought them home.”

His head bobbed back and forth for a minute while he recalled those days, but then he couldn’t contain the laughter. “Yeah, but if it was yesterday, you would be a lot less rested right now.”

I scoffed, mostly because we both knew I definitely still wasn’t sleeping. While he’d had the wherewithal to resign from the BAU after Hank was born, Spencer and I were stupid enough to both stay. Of course, I say stupid, but I knew we both loved it. It wasn’t often that people on the team got to be with their spouse as often as we did. Still, it was hard to leave the kids.

“God, that was awful.” I whined, rubbing the memory of sleepless nights off my face. “But in the best way.”

“You don’t have to lie.” Morgan said through his laughter, shaking his head when I snorted. Ever since I met him, he’d always been that person for me. No matter what was happening, he knew how to make it fun again. That never went away; even through all of the shit that had happened over the last few years, Morgan had stayed my best friend. Just another reason why I was lucky, I guess, to have a best friend who loved my husband just as much.

“Funny how things worked out, huh?” He muttered, clearly absorbed in similar thoughts.

“Funny’s a… funny word for it.”

He acknowledged the joke but kept that seriousness I’d been trying to avert. When you talk to someone who’s that masterful at toeing the line, tears were always a possibility. And even tears of the happy variety weren’t welcome right now. Of course, tell Derek Morgan _no_ and he’ll just try harder.

“I don’t mean to be a know it all, but… I told you so, you know.” He teased, taking a sip of the water bottle in his hand and refusing to meet my eyes.

“Okay, I’ll bite.” I answered with a playful jab in his side. “What did you tell me?”

“I told you… a _long_ time ago that everything would be alright. And it is.”

With a sweep of his hand, he gestured to the four people on the other side of the room. The sight alone took my breath away, but I didn’t want to admit that he’d won. I knew he saw the sparkle in my still tired eyes, but I dramatically turned my head away. “I don’t know, it’s a little better than alright if you ask me.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He accepted his defeat gracefully, which was more than I could say for my husband, who was currently clutching his stomach and toppling onto the ground.

“Et tu, Brute?” He rasped at our daughter, who stood proudly on his chest while raising a fist in the air.

“Liberty! Freedom! **Tyranny is dead**!”

After a brief moment of stunned silence from both Hank and Morgan, the latter turned to me. “What did she just say?”

“Shakespeare.” I said with the straightest face I could muster, crossing my arms over my chest. “He’s now their favorite comedian.”

“ _Comedian_? Did they take after you at all, or are they really just Mini Reids?” He responded, his incredulity and amusement at the disproportionate distribution of genetics.

“I… I really don’t know sometimes.” I responded honestly, shaking my head at the way Spencer let the children roll his body across the ground. I remembered a time where the very thought of three kids touching him would have sent him into a full-fledged bleach-filled freak out. But thankfully, he’d had the foresight to hire a therapist specifically to get a handle on his germaphobia _before_ the children began smearing every bodily fluid over our entire house.

“That’s just not right.” Morgan laughed, unable to watch his friend be stripped of all dignity by a bunch of toddlers.

My heart overflowing with love and admiration, I gave a small shrug as Spencer suddenly jumped up, grabbing two kids by the arms and dragging them back to the ground with him.

“He’s not so bad.”

The man of the hour appeared in front of us way faster than should have been possible, with two children tucked under his arms and a third following close behind. Out of breath and using that little breath to try and blow his hair out of his face, Spencer explained very clearly, “Okay, so, I might have promised ice cream in exchange for my life.”

“I don’t negotiate with traitors.” I said with a sarcastic glare aimed at the children.

“ _Please_ mommy!” The children began, their voices both high in register and volume. “Daddy _promised_!” The shrieking whines didn’t stop, only getting more insistent the longer I took to answer.

Glancing down at the only well-behaved child in the room, then back up to his father, I sighed. “You and Hank wanna come?”

But the boy was clearly just as exhausted by my children as I was, the poor thing’s eyes practically screaming to get the hellions out of his house so he could go to sleep. His dad figured it out, and graciously responded, “I think he’s good. Might need a break from English Lit, too. Thanks for coming by, though.”

Raising both hands to fist bump the kids tucked under my husband’s arms, Morgan gave the kids a much more excited departure. “See ya little man, pretty girl!”

“Bye uncle Morgan!” They replied in spookily perfect harmony. I swore they practiced when we weren’t looking.

Spencer and I wrestled them into their seats with more resistance than should have been given considering we’d given in to their demands, but I let it slide. We both knew they were just way too tired to act calmly. It seemed like such a stupid rule of nature, that children went haywire to avoid sleep.

Shutting the car door, I turned to Spencer with a playful smile. “Do you think we can actually make it to the shop before they pass out? I’ll bet you.”

“What do I get when I win?” He shot back, earning another tired laugh.

“Bragging rights?”

“Ooh, I like those. You never let me have them.”

The two kids inside the car were already eerily quiet, so we knew the bet ended before it’d even begun. I sighed, dropping my head back against the metal with a soft thud before rolling across the surface to the passenger side.

“I really hope they’re actually already asleep and not just pretending.” I whined, scared to open the door. “I don’t want them to get all sugar crazy right before bed.”

“You know, there actually isn’t any evidence that sugar causes hyperactivi—“ Spencer started on a rant I’d heard a billion times before, but I cut him off with a groan loud enough to wake the sleeping children before I realized my mistake.

“Babe. We’ve had this conversation so many times.”

“I know, but you still don’t believe me!” He squeaked back, defensive and also hesitant to raise his voice.

“You’re so full of shit.” I muttered, climbing inside but still being careful not to shut or slam the door.

“Language, Mrs. Reid.” I heard from outside the car before his door opened so quietly, I almost missed it.

Now speaking in hushed whispered, I glanced back at the two sleeping children buckled safely in their seats before I turned back to my husband. “Our daughter screamed ‘Tyranny is dead’ a couple minutes ago.”

“She’s dignified,” he clarified while pointing at me, “not _crass_.”

“Start the damn car.” I answered with a laugh, pulling the door shut and sinking back into my seat. He did so without another word, and the car ride home was silent. It wasn’t a suffocating or painful silence like the ones we’d had in cars before. No, it was the kind of silence they wrote about in stories about Christmas Eve.

There was a warmth and love in the quiet, the soft clicking of the turn signal reminding me that sound still existed, drawing my attention to the man who still hadn’t stopped smiling. I thought about how rare it used to be to see him happy so often. I thought about things I’d promised myself I would never think about again, but they didn’t make me sad anymore.

I didn’t stop thinking about them, even as we carried our two babies to their beds and tucked them in. The thoughts stayed as I kissed cheeks and foreheads that reminded me of him. When we were finally on our way to our room, I held his hand and still didn’t push them away.

Spencer saw the nostalgia in my blank stare, guiding me into our bed with even more tenderness than usual. Once we settled in, he brought himself as close to me as he could, his arm sliding under my pillow while the other brought his hand to rest against my face.

I giggled at the warmth of his legs tangling with mine and tapped his nose as he came even closer. “Now it’s just me and you.” I happily declared, letting my hands draw loose patterns across his shoulders and back.

“Whatever will we do on this rare occasion that the both of us aren’t completely exhausted _and_ the kids are?” He said, speaking quietly even though there was no reason to. The kids were completely knocked out.

“So many possibilities…” I teased, raising my leg to wrap around him, our bodies sliding against one another in a way we rarely had time to enjoy anymore. But that wasn’t what was currently on my mind. “I could… do the laundry. Or the dishes… Or take a shower that lasts longer than 5 minutes without a tiny human shrieking for my attention?”

Spencer laughed, which was exactly the response I was hoping for. But once it was over, his eyes glassed over, his mind rerouting to remind him of all the things I sacrificed on a daily basis. I wasn’t sure why he only focused on what I did; he did just as much, if not more. I figured it was just because he enjoyed domestic life so much, it never felt like work to him.

Dipping his head down to the nape of my neck, he let out a long sigh against the skin before rubbing against the goosebumps that formed. “You could do those things. Or… You can stay here.” He mumbled against me. “Stay with me.” 

“And do what?” I hummed.

“Nothing at all. Just let me hold you.”

The breath shuddered from my lungs, the raw emotion in his voice stirring the memories again. Suddenly filled with a need for reassurance, I grabbed my husband’s face and pulled it back so I could see him. It came as no surprise to him, because it was obvious in his slightly watery eyes that he was also caught up in things we’d both rather forget but knew that we would never be able to.

Unable to form the words that we needed, a rare thing for Spencer Reid, he closed the gap between us, instead. His kiss was gentle, his stubbly cheek scratching against mine. I kept ruining it, breathing too heavy between motions and smiling against his lips. But he didn’t seem to care, continuing to try no matter how many disruptions I caused.

Eventually, I pressed my forehead against his, closing my eyes and placing a hand over his heart to feel the steady rhythm.

“Morgan brought it up today.” I admitted, overcome with the emotions that followed feeling the soft thumping in his chest. How could I not remember the time I thought it had stopped?

“He’s never going to let me live it down, huh?” He replied, trying to make a joke but his voice cracked too much to be funny. “I’m sorry.”

I twisted my mouth to the side, sniffling against tears I didn’t realize had fallen until Spencer started to wipe them away.

“It’s okay. It just got me thinking.”

“About what?”

I knew it was his least favorite topic, and usually we would just let it drift off into the night and let it be. But that night felt different. It shouldn’t have; it wasn’t an anniversary, and neither of us was in any danger. Maybe that was it, I thought. Maybe it was just the fact that after everything, we’d finally achieved the happily ever after we always wanted.

“I haven’t told you I love you enough lately.” I said through the tears, biting my lip and trying to smile through the pout. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was pregnant purely from how emotional I’d gotten so quickly. But realistically, I was just tired and in love.

Stroking the side of my face, Spencer kissed my forehead before he spoke, continuing to pause between the words to lay more little reminders in the skin. “You tell me every day. In so many little ways.”

“Yeah, but I want you to hear it.” I said, becoming more serious. Propping myself up, I turned to my husband and grabbed his face, forcing him to look at me. “I love you.” I insisted, continuing even as his smile fell into an equally overwhelmed, sympathetic stare. “You’re a wonderful father. And your wife is very lucky.”

“I think it’s me who’s the lucky one.” He answered without any hesitation, a couple happy tears sliding down the side of his face.

Neither of us tried to stop them, and soon enough I draped myself over his chest, mumbling into the night. “Yeah. I guess we both are.”

Resting against his heart, I listened to it like a lullaby. He continued to draw across my back. The motions felt like words, but I didn’t bother trying to understand them. I knew what they said because he soon followed with the audible reminder.

“I love you.” There was no more need for ‘ _for now_ ’s or ‘ _forever_ ’s. There were no qualifiers, no worries, no conditions.

Now, Spencer could tell me that he loved me freely and without even the slightest hint of regret. And with a full heart and home, I replied just the same.

“I love you, too.”


End file.
